Local city information for Idaho Falls, ID

Idaho Falls is the county seat and largest city of Bonneville County, Idaho, United States. As of the 2000 census, the population of Idaho Falls was 50,730, with a 2008 metro population of 122,995.

Idaho Falls is the largest city in the Eastern Idaho region. Idaho Falls is the principal city of, and is included in, the Idaho Falls, Idaho Metropolitan Statistical Area, which is included in the Idaho Falls-Blackfoot, Idaho Combined Statistical Area. Idaho Falls is the third-largest metropolitan area in the state behind the Boise City-Nampa and Coeur d'Alene metropolitan areas. It is the largest metropolitan area of the Eastern Idaho region. In the past decade, it has been surpassed in population by Meridian and Nampa, making Idaho Falls the fifth-largest city in Idaho.
The city is served by the Idaho Falls Regional Airport and is home to the Idaho Falls Chukars minor league baseball team. Its sister city is the town of Tokai-Mura, Japan.

Idaho Falls borders on Ammon, Idaho and serves as a hub to several surrounding communities including Iona, Idaho.


What became Idaho Falls was the site of Taylor’s Crossing on the Montana Trail, a timber frame bridge built across the Snake River. The bridge was built by Matt Taylor, a Montana Trail freighter, who, in 1865, built a toll bridge across a narrow black basaltic gorge of the river that succeeded a ferry nine miles upstream by a few years. Taylor’s bridge served the new tide of westward migration and travel in the region that followed the military suppression of Shoshone resistance at the Bear River Massacre near Preston, Idaho in 1863. The bridge improved travel for settlers moving north and west and for miners, freighters, and others seeking riches in the gold fields of Idaho and Montana, especially, the boom towns of Bannack and Virginia City in western Montana. A private bank (the fourth in Idaho), a small hotel, a livery stable, and an eating house also sprang up at the bridge in 1865. By 1866, the emerging town had a stage station and mail service postmarked “Eagle Rock” as the area was already known by the name of the earlier ferry crossing upstream and to the north called Eagle Rock. The town changed its name to Eagle Rock in 1872 after the rock island in the river that was the nesting site for numerous eagles seven miles (11 km) north.

There had been a few cattle and sheep ranchers in the area for years. In 1874, water rights were established on nearby Willow Creek and the first grain harvested but settlement was sparse consisting of only a couple of families and small irrigation ditches. The first child of European decent was born at Eagle Rock in 1874 also.

The winds of change blew in the form of the Utah and Northern Railroad that came north from Utah through Eagle Rock to cross the Snake River at the same narrow gorge as the wooden bridge. The U&NR was building its road to the large new copper mines at Butte, Montana with the backing of robber baron Jay Gould as Union Pacific Railroad had purchased the U&NR only a few years prior. Grading crews reached Eagle Rock in late 1878 and by early 1879 a wild camp-town with dozens of tents and shanties moved to Eagle Rock with the usual collection of saloons, dancehalls, and gambling holes. The railroad company had 16 locomotives and 300 train cars working between Logan, Utah and the once quiet stage stop. A new iron railroad bridge was fabricated in Athens, Pennsylvania at a cost of $30,000 and shipped, by rail, to the site and erected in April and May 1879. The bridge was long and in two spans with an island in the center. The camp-town moved on but Eagle Rock, the little town at the wooden bridge, now had regular train service and was the site for several of the railroad’s buildings, shops, and facilities expanding and completely transforming the town.

Settlers began homesteading the Upper Snake River Valley as soon as the railroad came through. The first of the new settlers carved out homesteads to the north at Egin (near present day Parker) and at Pooles Island (near present day Menan) and were almost entirely Mormon. Reports of their success reached Mormon Church officials in Utah and, in 1883, the Church organized Mormon colonization of the Upper Snake River Valley. Large scale settlement ensued and in a decade the Mormons built roads, bridges, dams, and irrigation canals that brought most of the Upper Snake River Valley under cultivation. In 1887, following the construction of the Oregon Short Line, most of the railroad facilities were removed to Pocatello but Eagle Rock was fast becoming the commercial center of an agricultural empire.

In 1891, the town voted to rename itself to Idaho Falls after the rapids that existed below the bridge. In 1895, only 12 years after the onset of Mormon colonization, the largest irrigation canal in the world, named the Great Feeder, began diverting water from the Snake River and aided in converting tens of thousands of acres of desert into green farmland in the vicinity of Idaho Falls. The area grew sugar beets, potatoes, peas, grains, and alfalfa and became one of the most productive regions of the United States.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints completed construction and dedicated their Idaho Falls Idaho Temple here on September 23, 1945 to serve the Latter-day Saint population in the area. There are many other beautiful churches in the Idaho Falls area which serve the diverse religions of the area.

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