Peasants who ate the rotten produce sickened and entire villages were consumed with cholera and typhus. Parish priests desperate to provide for their congregations were forced to forsake buying coffins in order to feed starving families, with the dead going unburied or buried only in the clothes they wore when they died. Idaho's first potato grower was not a farmer at all, but a Presbyterian missionary named Henry Harmon Spalding. The first crop was a failure but the second year the crop was quite good. The first substantial potato fields planted in Idaho belonged to Mormon colonists.
Historical accounts indicate that their presence in Idaho was partially an accident.
As the numbers of Mormon colonists in the Salt Lake Valley increased, they pushed outward seeking new lands. Potatoes were one of the first items the farmers planted. This site is best viewed in Netscape 3, IE3 or later. Global Potato Focus Inc. All rights reserved worldwide.