1878 DANILSON They called it pluff down in Carolina, a mispronunciation of plough, an easy enough mistake and one that took over the...

1863 URIAH AND LOUISA Still in the penumbra of the old Fort Hall's crumbled, white adobe walls, Louisa and Uriah watch the two horsemen...

1863 ED LONG "He's not goin' to say," Deputy Hokansen tells the sheriff. "Still goin' on about the Mormon family?" Adams asks....

1878 JOHN GARRISON You walk across enough territory, you start noticing differences you generally miss at first glance. A traveler, eyes...

1863 URIAH AND LOUISA Still in the penumbra of the old Fort Hall's crumbled, white adobe walls, Louisa and Uriah watch the two horsemen...

1863 ED LONG "He's not goin' to say," Deputy Hokansen tells the sheriff. "Still goin' on about the Mormon family?" Adams asks....

1878 JOHN GARRISON You walk across enough territory, you start noticing differences you generally miss at first glance. A traveler, eyes...

©2025 RALPH THURSTON 1863 URIAH AND LOUISA From the rear of the wagon, overlooking the sickly girls, Louisa's voice cut like the shrill...

©2025 Ralph Thurston 1855 MCCANDLESS 1855 "A ragtag pair!" Richard Grant's voice reached Lewis McCandless and John Leavitt before they...

All material © 2025 Ralph Thurston LATE NOVEMBER 2012 DAVID With every shovel thrust, air rebounds inside the buried boxlike framework,...

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, minimal government oversight and vast communicational gaps allowed just about...

Below is a 1943 USGS map which shows the location of part of the West Side Canal flumes through the lavas northwest of Moreland. Compare...

Though Company H accompanied the Shoshone Bruneau and Boise tribes from western Idaho to Fort Hall for a six week trip in 1869, no...

In May of 1894, John England wrote to LDS Church President Wilford Woodruff, asking for guidance on a move to Payette, Idaho. By...

The above display shows the Aberdeen-Springfield Canal's path and its seepage loss through specific areas. The Canal loses to seepage and...

The map below depicts areas of Idaho under irrigation well moratoriums which the Idaho Department of Water Resources has issued since...

The recently instituted water curtailment in southeast Idaho may seem like a surprise to most of us, but concern about diminishing...

For the "Gathering of the Tribes" chapter in "The Great Pasture", I had to go through two thousand government documents (mostly letters)...

Photo courtesy of Library of Congress Though some view government data gathering as an intrusion, it certainly serves those seeking an...

At the end of the nineteenth century, irrigation transformed the West from an area dependent on mining and grazing to an agricultural...