page_title: Twin Falls, Idaho
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Twin Falls, Idaho / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Photographer: myself, Gh5046 Taken 2007/06/02 at the Snake River Canyon at Twin Falls, Idaho. The brightness/contrast of the photo has been adjusted, otherwise it is in its original state.
context_page_description: Twin Falls is the county seat and largest city of Twin Falls County, Idaho, United States. The city had a population of 44,125 as of the 2010 census.
  In the Magic Valley region, Twin Falls is the largest city in a one-hundred-mile radius, and is the regional commercial center for south-central Idaho and northeastern Nevada. It is the principal city of the Twin Falls Metropolitan Statistical Area, which officially includes the entirety of Twin Falls and Jerome counties. The resort community of Jackpot, Nevada, fifty miles south at the state line, is unofficially considered part of the greater Twin Falls area.
  Located on a broad plain at the south rim of the Snake River Canyon, Twin Falls is where daredevil Evel Knievel attempted to jump across the canyon in 1974 on a steam-powered rocket. The jump site is northeast of central Twin Falls, midway between Shoshone Falls and the Perrine Bridge.
context_section_description: Excavations at Wilson Butte Cave near Twin Falls in 1959 revealed evidence of human activity, including arrowheads, that rank among the oldest dated artifacts in North America. Later Native American tribes predominant in the area included the Northern Shoshone and Bannock.
  The first people of European ancestry to visit the Twin Falls area are believed to be members of a group led by American Wilson Price Hunt, which attempted to blaze an all-water trail westward from St. Louis, Missouri, to Astoria, Oregon, in 1811 and 1812. Hunt's expedition met with disaster: much of his expedition was destroyed and one man was killed in rapids on the Snake River known as Caldron Linn near present-day Murtaugh. Hunt and the surviving members of his expedition completed the journey to Astoria by land.
  In 1812 and 1813, Robert Stuart successfully led an overland expedition eastward from Astoria to St. Louis, which passed through the Twin Falls area. Stuart's route formed the basis of what became the Oregon Trail. Some 150 years later, Robert Stuart Middle School in Twin Falls was named in his honor.
  The first permanent settlement in the area was a stage stop established in 1864 at Rock Creek near the present-day townsite. By 1890 there were a handful of successful agricultural operations in the Snake River Canyon, but the lack of infrastructure and the canyon's geography made irrigating the dry surrounding area improbable at best.
  To address this issue, in 1900 I. B. Perrine founded the Twin Falls Land and Water Company, largely to build an irrigation canal system for the area. After an August 1900 area survey of 244,025 acres (98,753 hectares), in October 1900 the company was granted the necessary water rights to begin construction of the irrigation system. Several lots in the surveyed area were set aside specifically for future townsites. These lots eventually became the settlements of Twin Falls, Kimberly, Buhl, Filer, Hansen and Murtaugh. In 1902, the project nearly failed as most of the original investors pulled out, with only Salt Lake businessman Stanley Milner maintaining a stake in the company.
  By 1903, Perrine, who had been a successful farmer and rancher in the Snake River Canyon, had obtained private financing from Milner and others under the provisions of the Carey Act of 1894 to build a dam on the Snake River near Caldron Linn. Completed in 1905, Milner Dam and its accompanying canals made commercial irrigation outside the Snake River Canyon practical for the first time. As a result, Perrine is generally credited as the founder of Twin Falls.
  A land drawing was held for the future townsite in July 1903 with disappointing results. A much more successful drawing was held in October 1904. Twin Falls city was founded in 1904 as a planned community, designed by celebrated Franco-American architect Emmanuel Louis Masqueray, with proceeds from sales of townsite lots going toward construction of irrigation canals. Twin Falls was incorporated as a village on April 12, 1905. The city is named for a nearby waterfall on the Snake River of the same name. In 1907, Twin Falls became the seat of the newly formed Twin Falls County.
  The original townsite follows a unique design. It is laid out on northeast-to-southwest and northwest-to-southeast roads. It is purported that the reason this was done was to allow sun to come into every room in the home at some point during the day. The northwest-to-southeast roads were numbered and called avenues, while the northeast-to-southwest roads were numbered and called streets. Only two central streets, the northwest-to-southeast Main Avenue and the northeast-to-southwest Shoshone Street, were named. This system created situations where one side of a street may have an entirely different address than the other, and where the corner of "3rd and 3rd," for example, was in more than one location. In 2003 the numbered northeast-to-southwest streets were renamed to alleviate decades of confusion. Later city roads, such as Blue Lakes Boulevard, Addison Avenue, and Washington Street, are laid out in standard no
caption: Snake River Canyon
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XTi", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0", "Image DateTime": "2007:06:11 12:00:08", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "236", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1018", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "14099", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/320", "EXIF FNumber": "11", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "400", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2007:06:02 11:40:01", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2007:06:02 11:40:01", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "272693/32768", "EXIF ApertureValue": "453435/65536", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "55", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3888", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2592", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "3888000/877", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "432000/97", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard"}