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The Sunday Blessings Podcast is hosted by Jay Hildebrandt and features stories of faith, hope, and inspiration. You'll hear extended interviews, musician & artist spotlights, and more. Sunday Blessings can be heard weekly on Sundays from 5am-5pm mountain standard time on Classy 97, Sunny 97, and Classy 97 Lite.
00:00:02 [Speaker 1]
Sharing stories of faith, hope, and inspiration.
00:00:06 [Speaker 1]
This is the Sunday Blessings Podcast.
00:00:10 [Speaker 2]
Thank you for joining me for the Sunday Blessings Podcast today.
00:00:13 [Speaker 2]
I'm Jay Hildebrandt.
00:00:15 [Speaker 2]
When we think of pioneers, we often imagine wagon trains and handcarts bound for Utah.
00:00:20 [Speaker 2]
However, Idaho had its own pioneers who settled in this region.
00:00:24 [Speaker 2]
Becky Freeman, a volunteer at the Family Search Center in Idaho Falls has dedicated time to studying these early Idaho pioneers and shares their stories with us.
00:00:33 [Speaker 3]
Well, one of my favorite stories is Rebecca Mitchell.
00:00:36 [Speaker 3]
She was a school teacher.
00:00:37 [Speaker 3]
She was from Illinois.
00:00:38 [Speaker 3]
She had a a young daughter.
00:00:41 [Speaker 3]
She decided that she wanted to become a missionary for the Baptist church.
00:00:44 [Speaker 3]
She went to some training and she wanted to go.
00:00:48 [Speaker 3]
They wouldn't let her go because she had a daughter.
00:00:50 [Speaker 3]
She said, if I pay my way, can I do it?
00:00:53 [Speaker 3]
And they said, yeah.
00:00:55 [Speaker 3]
That's okay.
00:00:56 [Speaker 3]
So she sold everything she owned so she could get enough money to bring her and her daughter out.
00:01:01 [Speaker 3]
They went to, Ogden.
00:01:03 [Speaker 3]
And from there, they had to get a train.
00:01:06 [Speaker 3]
They heard that there was a place called Bellevue, Idaho over near the Boise area that was really wild.
00:01:13 [Speaker 3]
They they really needed some religion.
00:01:15 [Speaker 3]
So that was her goal.
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She got as far as Blackfoot where she was going to get a stage coach ticket to get to Bellevue, but she didn't have enough money.
00:01:24 [Speaker 3]
And so somebody else said, well, you don't have to go that far.
00:01:27 [Speaker 3]
There's a really wild town just a few miles north.
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And so that's how she ended up in Eagle Rock.
00:01:33 [Speaker 3]
She showed up on 06/06/1882 to this rough, dirty town full of saloons and gambling halls.
00:01:42 [Speaker 3]
No churches, no schools.
00:01:45 [Speaker 3]
The first, very first Sunday, she got a shack, just a rumbled down shack, Shandy, invited people over and taught the first Sunday school lesson.
00:01:55 [Speaker 3]
And that was the first permanent Sunday school in all of Southern Idaho.
00:02:00 [Speaker 3]
The next day, she started a school.
00:02:04 [Speaker 3]
She invited people to school.
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Now by this time, she is completely out of money.
00:02:09 [Speaker 3]
She has no money whatsoever to even live on, let alone try and run a school.
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But a gentleman showed up that had a couple of children he wanted to put in her school and he was willing to pay in advance for her to, take his students, his children to school.
00:02:27 [Speaker 3]
And he did, and that was enough money for her to be able to live until the end of the semester when the everybody else paid.
00:02:35 [Speaker 3]
And she said that was provincial.
00:02:37 [Speaker 3]
That was, you know, the inspiration coming from the Lord that helped them to do that, and so she called it her province school.
00:02:45 [Speaker 3]
And that school continued.
00:02:46 [Speaker 3]
She later merged that school with working with Dick Chamberlain and Robert Anderson to create the first school permanent school in Eagle Rock, which now is part of the Bonneville County School District ninety three.
00:03:02 [Speaker 2]
Some other people there I understand is a a Ryrie family that had some faith promoting experiences.
00:03:07 [Speaker 3]
Well, the Ryrie family, of course, settled up in the the Ryrie area, and their missus missus Ryrie was a a Lowell.
00:03:16 [Speaker 3]
She was from the Lowell family.
00:03:18 [Speaker 3]
They had lived down in Utah, and the church had kind of been advertising that there was some good lands and opportunities up in what they called Salt River, which is now the Star Valley area.
00:03:31 [Speaker 3]
They moved up there with a large family for a while, and things were really not good at all.
00:03:38 [Speaker 3]
There was, it was a really a rough period of time.
00:03:41 [Speaker 3]
And finally, they decided to abandon the settlement, and they moved.
00:03:46 [Speaker 3]
They were heading back down.
00:03:48 [Speaker 3]
They were gonna go to Utah, but they needed to get to Eagle Rock where they get a train that would take them on down to Utah.
00:03:54 [Speaker 3]
They made it as far as the what is the Shelton Ryrie area now, which there was nothing.
00:03:59 [Speaker 3]
There was no settlement.
00:04:00 [Speaker 3]
There was nothing there.
00:04:01 [Speaker 3]
It was just sagebrush.
00:04:03 [Speaker 3]
And they stayed one night, camped one night, they got up in the morning, and there had been a snowstorm all night and it blocked all the roads.
00:04:09 [Speaker 3]
They were stuck.
00:04:10 [Speaker 3]
There was one gentleman, David Ryrie, who was living there.
00:04:14 [Speaker 3]
He had a just a one room, log cabin, and it was he was using it as a chicken coop.
00:04:21 [Speaker 3]
And he volunteered to let them stay there because they had to stay the winter until spring came.
00:04:27 [Speaker 3]
And by the time that they had stayed for the spring, they decided they liked it well enough to be to stay and make it their permanent home.
00:04:36 [Speaker 3]
David did marry their daughter, Leah Ann, and that's how the families get tied together.
00:04:41 [Speaker 3]
But that's how they came and and settled in this area, and we're so glad they did.
00:04:46 [Speaker 2]
And that's how Briarrie got its name.
00:04:49 [Speaker 2]
That's that's interesting.
00:04:50 [Speaker 2]
Any other, pioneer faith in our audience for this?
00:04:55 [Speaker 3]
Kate Curley, Kate and her husband, Bowen Curley, came to this area in the late eighteen nineties.
00:05:00 [Speaker 3]
And, again, this town was just sagebrush, dirt, dust, animals in the street, everything.
00:05:08 [Speaker 3]
It was just a horrible place.
00:05:10 [Speaker 3]
And she was not very happy with it, to be honest, and felt there was a need to change.
00:05:14 [Speaker 3]
And so she got some of the ladies organized and created what they called the Village Improvement Society, and their goal was to beautify the area and make it more family friendly.
00:05:24 [Speaker 3]
So they, the first thing they did is get some, what they would call, garbage cans, some boxes that they could put the, garbage from the street in.
00:05:33 [Speaker 3]
And they said, heaven help anybody who tried to throw garbage in the street and not put them in those in those boxes because they would, they would get arrested and fined and even jailed.
00:05:43 [Speaker 3]
They really pushed it.
00:05:45 [Speaker 3]
They managed to get ordinance passes so the animals could be locked up, and so it became better.
00:05:50 [Speaker 3]
But one of the things they did is they got some property over on Tenth Street.
00:05:54 [Speaker 3]
They planted some produce gardens.
00:05:57 [Speaker 3]
And for four years, they would grow produce and sell it.
00:06:00 [Speaker 3]
They got enough money to organize 20,000 or to purchase 20,000 seedling trees from a nursery in the Mideast, had them shipped out, and planted them all around in what is now the the numbered streets and the Ridge District.
00:06:16 [Speaker 3]
And so those areas now, you know, are very, very green and fertile and pretty, and it was that was the beginning when they started that, and they felt that there was inspiration there in making it possible for them to do that, to make it a more beautiful place for families to live in than they have now.
00:06:34 [Speaker 2]
Oh, that's that's one of the I I hear they they say the best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago.
00:06:39 [Speaker 3]
So but this is
00:06:40 [Speaker 2]
this is how many years ago when they they did this?
00:06:42 [Speaker 3]
This was around eighteen, just about 1900 when they did that.
00:06:47 [Speaker 3]
And, they've had some people check some of the trees, and they think that some of the trees in that area maybe are some of those original trees.
00:06:54 [Speaker 2]
Wow.
00:06:55 [Speaker 3]
At this time, you know, we're not sure, but they they think that that's probably what it is.
00:06:58 [Speaker 2]
Can you give me one or two more stories of some of the the pioneers or what it was like?
00:07:04 [Speaker 3]
Oh, yeah.
00:07:05 [Speaker 3]
This area is just so full of so many interesting stories.
00:07:09 [Speaker 3]
And I'm sure you're familiar with it, the building of the bridge, the Taylor's Bridge.
00:07:14 [Speaker 3]
That was the very first.
00:07:16 [Speaker 3]
An interesting part of that story is when they when Matt Taylor decided to build his bridge, he had to get some logs that were 45 feet long.
00:07:25 [Speaker 3]
Now the best place to get those was up by Spencer and Du Bois.
00:07:28 [Speaker 3]
How'd you get 45 foot logs from Spencer here, in a wagon?
00:07:34 [Speaker 3]
You can't really do it in a wagon.
00:07:36 [Speaker 3]
It's not practical.
00:07:37 [Speaker 3]
So they waited until till the first snows came, and then they would just hook a team to a log and drag them over the snow to get them here.
00:07:48 [Speaker 3]
And so that's where they got their big logs to start building the bridge.
00:07:52 [Speaker 3]
Of course, they built the bridge, and then it washed out the first year because it wasn't high enough, so they had to rebuild it.
00:07:58 [Speaker 3]
And, of course, and that was the beginning of it wasn't the beginning of sitting here, but there wasn't, you know, any real, what we would call a settlement until the railroad came.
00:08:14 [Speaker 3]
The railroad, of course, came in, 1879.
00:08:18 [Speaker 3]
They built the railroad bridge that was able to get the railroad going on up to Montana.
00:08:23 [Speaker 3]
That still didn't bring settlement.
00:08:25 [Speaker 3]
It wasn't until the railroad decided to move their railyards up here.
00:08:31 [Speaker 3]
They wanted to have a railyard up in Idaho.
00:08:35 [Speaker 3]
So if they had to fix a train or something, they didn't have to send them all the way to Utah.
00:08:39 [Speaker 3]
And they had talked to several people, and they couldn't.
00:08:41 [Speaker 3]
Everybody's trying to charge too much for the land.
00:08:44 [Speaker 3]
Well, Robert Anderson and his brother Jack Anderson had purchased a lot of land in this area around the bridge.
00:08:52 [Speaker 3]
So they went to the railroad and they said, listen.
00:08:54 [Speaker 3]
We will give you, the right way through the town and a 100 feet on either side to build your depots and whatever you need.
00:09:01 [Speaker 3]
And then we'll give you another 104 acres to build your railroads if you will bring them to this area.
00:09:06 [Speaker 3]
The railroad aren't dumb.
00:09:07 [Speaker 3]
You know, to get free land that was worth it.
00:09:09 [Speaker 3]
So they announced this was going to be their railroad, and that's when the town started growing as the railroad people came in.
00:09:18 [Speaker 3]
And many people came to work on the the railroad and to work on the building, the bridge, and also on the, you know, building the railyards.
00:09:27 [Speaker 3]
People that we're familiar with, like Thomas Ricks and William Kiefer and John Poole and, people that, you know, we we're familiar with the names.
00:09:35 [Speaker 3]
They established this area, and that's when it brought brought the area.
00:09:41 [Speaker 3]
The area actually started and became a town as we know it at that time.
00:09:47 [Speaker 3]
Now the railroads only stayed here for a few years, and then there was some problems, and they, moved down to Montana.
00:09:55 [Speaker 3]
They thought this might be the ending of the town, but it wasn't.
00:09:58 [Speaker 3]
It wasn't.
00:09:59 [Speaker 3]
Because several things.
00:10:00 [Speaker 3]
One, the resilience of the people.
00:10:02 [Speaker 3]
Two, they had started the irrigation system.
00:10:04 [Speaker 3]
The Andersons had started the irrigation system, and all of a sudden it became a rich, fertile land for agriculture.
00:10:11 [Speaker 3]
And another thing that was significant was tourism to Yellowstone Park.
00:10:15 [Speaker 3]
It brought tourism up there, which brought business.
00:10:18 [Speaker 3]
And so even though, the railroad took a lot of the population, a lot of the businesses, the town did not die off.
00:10:25 [Speaker 3]
It was able to keep moving and growing.
00:10:28 [Speaker 3]
So we're thankful for for those things that happened that made it possible for us to have a a town here today.
00:10:35 [Speaker 2]
Tell tell me about the Wagon Box prophecy.
00:10:37 [Speaker 3]
Okay.
00:10:38 [Speaker 3]
Well, this is important to me because my great grandfather was working in Salt Lake for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saints as a wagon master.
00:10:47 [Speaker 3]
And when they were going to come up, Wilford Woodruff and some other leaders of the church wanted to come up and see how this area was doing.
00:10:53 [Speaker 3]
Like when This was a this was 1884.
00:10:56 [Speaker 2]
Mhmm.
00:10:57 [Speaker 3]
And the first settlement had been in 1882, coming mostly with the railroad, but, you know, many other people coming up to work agriculture and whatever.
00:11:05 [Speaker 3]
And they wanted to see it.
00:11:06 [Speaker 3]
So they came so they asked my great grandfather to come up as a wagon master to bring one of the wagons.
00:11:11 [Speaker 3]
It was a large group.
00:11:11 [Speaker 3]
It's only several wagons.
00:11:13 [Speaker 3]
And so he came up.
00:11:14 [Speaker 3]
So he was there.
00:11:16 [Speaker 3]
They had a conference over on Sand Creek, and the people were really discouraged.
00:11:21 [Speaker 3]
I mean, they had they were ready to go home.
00:11:23 [Speaker 2]
And this was in Iona.
00:11:25 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:11:25 [Speaker 3]
Uh-huh.
00:11:25 [Speaker 3]
No.
00:11:26 [Speaker 3]
It's oh, it's pretty close.
00:11:27 [Speaker 3]
It's they're off of Telford Road.
00:11:28 [Speaker 3]
That's where it's located.
00:11:29 [Speaker 3]
They, they they were they were ready to go home.
00:11:33 [Speaker 3]
That was too cold.
00:11:34 [Speaker 3]
Things didn't grow well.
00:11:35 [Speaker 3]
There was too much wind, too much dust.
00:11:38 [Speaker 3]
So but he pulled up the wagon, and they, in a wagon.
00:11:42 [Speaker 3]
I don't know if it was my great grandfather's, but we like to pretend it was.
00:11:46 [Speaker 3]
And, he's kinda set up a place up there where he could stand up so everybody could hear him.
00:11:51 [Speaker 3]
And he said, I foresee this is going to be a beautiful place.
00:11:54 [Speaker 3]
And he talked about, schools of higher learning.
00:11:58 [Speaker 3]
He said he saw temples.
00:12:00 [Speaker 3]
He saw green valleys.
00:12:01 [Speaker 3]
He saw crops growing, you know, flowers and trees, and he could see that it was a beautiful area.
00:12:08 [Speaker 3]
And he blessed the land that it would be fruitful and multiply and that it would be a place where the people could live here.
00:12:16 [Speaker 3]
And so they decided to stay.
00:12:20 [Speaker 3]
My great grandfather went home, got his family, and moved back up.
00:12:23 [Speaker 3]
A lot of other people did as they heard that.
00:12:25 [Speaker 3]
They felt that would be a good place, and that is one of the reasons why this area is so fertile.
00:12:31 [Speaker 3]
One little interesting thing, the the insects, mosquitoes in this area were horrible.
00:12:36 [Speaker 3]
It was really bad.
00:12:37 [Speaker 3]
But after that prophecy, the wind started.
00:12:39 [Speaker 3]
And you know where Idaho winds, we get tired of them, but it's helped what keeps the insects down and made it possible for them to live.
00:12:47 [Speaker 3]
It was a blessing that came as a part of his prophecy and his blessing of the land.
00:12:53 [Speaker 3]
And then also immediately after that's when they started the irrigation systems.
00:12:57 [Speaker 3]
And so the land then could be used and multiplied and and, become very productive agriculture land.
00:13:06 [Speaker 2]
And and did did the climate also
00:13:08 [Speaker 3]
moderate?
00:13:09 [Speaker 3]
The the climate moderated.
00:13:12 [Speaker 3]
It it eased up so they could the growing season became a little longer so they could grow things.
00:13:18 [Speaker 3]
And so, yes, his blessing blessing the land really made a difference in getting this area to grow.
00:13:25 [Speaker 2]
And and as I recall, from the wagon box prophecy, what I've seen, he also talked about temples, plural.
00:13:32 [Speaker 2]
Yeah.
00:13:32 [Speaker 2]
Tell me about that.
00:13:33 [Speaker 3]
Well, it was just he did.
00:13:34 [Speaker 3]
He said temples.
00:13:35 [Speaker 3]
And, of course, for many years, we only had the Idaho Falls Temple.
00:13:38 [Speaker 3]
And but when they first announced the next temple, which is in Rexburg, everybody who'd heard that prophecy goes, temples.
00:13:46 [Speaker 3]
Yep.
00:13:46 [Speaker 3]
And, of course, now there are multiple temples in the area that came.
00:13:51 [Speaker 3]
That is something you first say.
00:13:52 [Speaker 3]
And institutions of higher learning, he talked about.
00:13:55 [Speaker 3]
And we thought that, you know but now when you stop and think what we have in our area within a 50 mile radius of, you know, ISU, BYU Idaho, the College of Southern Idaho, you know, there are many institutions in this area that people can get an education, which would seem impossible in that day and age Yeah.
00:14:17 [Speaker 2]
In that.
00:14:18 [Speaker 2]
So do you see a hand of providence over Idaho when you think back on these stories and and how far things have progressed here?
00:14:28 [Speaker 3]
Oh, definitely.
00:14:29 [Speaker 3]
I have seen so much of that.
00:14:31 [Speaker 3]
I think this was a blessed area, and it was it was selected.
00:14:34 [Speaker 3]
And that the people who came were people who wanted to make it a success, whether they were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter day Saint Zor or the other pioneers who came.
00:14:45 [Speaker 3]
They wanted to make this because they could see the value in this area.
00:14:49 [Speaker 3]
And, of course, now we look back on it and we see such a a beautiful fertile area.
00:14:53 [Speaker 3]
We see, you know, how the city is growing, the businesses, the things that are happening, and what a blessed area it is to be in.
00:15:00 [Speaker 3]
And we know it's those early pioneers that established it.
00:15:04 [Speaker 3]
When they look back at what they had to do to make this possible, we really appreciate those, and we feel it's blessed because of it.
00:15:12 [Speaker 2]
Thank you, Becky.
00:15:13 [Speaker 2]
We've been talking with Becky Freeman, a volunteer at the FamilySearch Center in Idaho Falls.
00:15:17 [Speaker 2]
She's dedicated time to studying these early Idaho pioneers and love sharing her stories about them.
00:15:24 [Speaker 2]
Also, just for your information, the FamilySearch Center on Elva in Idaho Falls is open to the public with a multitude of free services.
00:15:32 [Speaker 2]
They can help you find your own family history and genealogy with some amazing resources.
00:15:39 [Speaker 2]
Also, if you want to digitize and preserve old family pictures or video or audio recordings on tape.
00:15:46 [Speaker 2]
Those can be digitized with equipment there as well.
00:15:48 [Speaker 2]
It's all free and open to the public.
00:15:51 [Speaker 2]
If you want to find out more, you can just search on your search engine, Idaho Falls family search center, and you'll find the way to get information on that.
00:16:04 [Speaker 2]
This has been the Sunday Bussings podcast.
00:16:05 [Speaker 2]
I'm Jay Hildebrandt.
00:16:07 [Speaker 2]
Thanks for joining us.
00:16:14 [Speaker 1]
Thanks for listening to the Sunday Blessings podcast.
00:16:17 [Speaker 1]
If you enjoy the show, please share, subscribe, and rate the podcast.
00:16:21 [Speaker 1]
Sunday Blessings is hosted by Jay Hildebrand and is a production of Riverbend Media Group.
00:16:26 [Speaker 1]
For more information or to contact the show, visit riverbendmediagroup.com.