When Mormons first settled the Great Salt Lake basin in the mid-1800s, the vision of leader Brigham Young was to make the “desert blossom like a rose.”

American Falls farmer Dirk Driscoll uses the same phrase to describe the transformation of arid, sagebrush-painted southeastern Idaho into an agricultural oasis. The landscape has become a patchwork of circles and squares, turned emerald green by budding crops, all drinking from abundant rivers, canals, and subsurface reservoirs.

Church members were “called” to settle in southern Idaho, from its present-day border with Wyoming to the Boise valley, and to share their expertise. In essence, those settlers were as much agricultural emissaries as they were church missionaries.

Irrigation systems like this linear line near American Falls transform Southeast Idaho into a fertile oasis. Mormons are credited with bringing the concept of irrigation with them in the late 1800s. Photo: Mel Coulter.

“Every place they went they started building canal systems and irrigation systems to help the valley blossom like a rose,” explains Driscoll of the well-orchestrated conversion. The fifth-generation farmer recently completed a tenure as stake president within the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. Driscoll Farms and its related enterprises are direct descendants of the irrigation expertise Mormons brought to Idaho more than a century ago.

“Basic to their success was their expertise in irrigating,” chronicles the Desert News 2002, an almanac published by the LDS church. “And by 1910, more than 100 canals had been dug in the upper Snake River valley.”

The greening of southeastern Idaho actually began in 1855 when a group of Young’s followers established Fort Lemhi and introduced irrigation practices. That initial settlement attempt was short-lived, though, abandoned after Indian attacks. Another group of Mormons followed five years later, establishing the state’s first permanent settlement at Franklin. It took more than two decades for L. D. Wilson Jr. to build the first canal system west of modern-day Blackfoot. Wilson also was the first person to ship potatoes from Idaho in about 1899, explains Driscoll, whose family operates a major potato packing and shipping business.

His research about agricultural development in the region identifies five major milestones:
• The 1855 settlement of Fort Lemhi
• Establishment of Franklin as the first Idaho and Mormon settlement in 1860
• Settlement of the Montpelier area on the Wyoming/Utah border in 1863
• Arrival of a Mormon family and subsequent settlement of Oakley and Almo in the Burley/Rupert area in 1875
• Settlement in the Rexburg area in 1879

Most of those areas were relatively flat and fertile, ideal for agricultural development and creation of canal systems to nourish that development. Where canals couldn’t reach, a massive Snake River aquifer below the surface offered promise to well drillers. Entrepreneurs Leo Larsen and Cliff Wride conceived plans independent of each other in the early 1940s to tap into the massive underground reservoir. Both asked Idaho Power to extend electric lines to potential well sites and both ran into corporate obstacles, says Driscoll.

The power company was reluctant to bear the cost of extending service to remote areas and placed the financial burden on the landowners. Once wells were drilled, and the potential became obvious, Idaho Power reimbursed Larsen and Wride for their expenditures and eagerly welcomed other water prospectors.

Early settlers of southeastern Idaho recognized the untapped potential contained in the sagebrush-dominated plain. It took only their expertise in irrigation to unlock that potential and convert the soil into fertile, highly productive cropland. They were true visionaries, Driscoll says.

Among the early settlers was his great grandfather, Martin Adams Driscoll, who homesteaded in the bottoms, a low-lying region that eventually was supplanted by American Falls Reservoir. He moved from the bottoms when the town of American Falls was relocated to make room for the reservoir in 1928.

The Driscolls, especially Dirk’s father, Wallace, aggressively acquired new land and took advantage of both water supplies—surface and ground—to continue the “blossoming” concept. Today, Dirk and his seven siblings operate a multi-faceted family operation that includes sugar beets grown under contract; potatoes that are packed and shipped through SunSpice of Idaho, a cooperative they manage; wheat production; alfalfa production; and a cattle business.
The family’s farms include 8,000 acres of irrigated land and 2,500 acres of pastureland in the American Falls/Aberdeen area. They thrive as living testimonies of the foresight, tenacity, and expertise of early Mormon settlers.
 

previous | next