Unsung Heroes and Settlers

of

Bonneville County, Idaho

Otto-soft

A Few Unsung Heroes—

Read how Matt Taylor, an early freighter and entrepreneur, managed in the 1860’s to build the first bridge across the treacherous Snake River in the future Bonneville County area, thus becoming a local hero and legend. With his  brother-in-law, Robert Anderson, Matt formed a business partnership that opened the way for the settling of Eagle Rock, Idaho, later to be Idaho Falls.

Contact the Author:

Phone: 208-523-4777

Cell:     208-313-6777

E-mail: cotteson@cableone.net

Home address: 

429 Parkway Circle

Idaho Falls, ID 83401

 

James Madison “Matt” Taylor

Discover how a brave young man snow- shoed over a mountain range through a blizzard from Montpelier to Malad, Idaho, to save the lives of his family. He later became a wealthy freighter, rancher, and father of twenty-three children in the settlement of Iona, Idaho, in the Upper Snake River Valley.

James Henry Denning, Sr.

John Empey

Hold your breath as John Empey, local Watermaster, looks down the gun barrels of nineteen angry irrigators and lives to tell about it.  John was an Ammon, Idaho, settler and one of three of the first county commissioners when Bonneville County was organized in 1911.

Mary Alice Bybee Boomer

Find out that women can be heroes, too.  Alice Boomer lived in Eagle Rock when it became Idaho Falls in 1891 and worked with the Village Improvement Society to bring such amenities to Idaho Falls as the Public Library, a house numbering system, cemetery improvements, and a little family park in the middle of the town’s residential area, Kate Curley Park.

John Shelton Howard

Learn how Shelton, Idaho, was named for a young father who went by his middle name for many years to protect his families from the law.  He became one of the most compassionate and venerated men of his time, and a hero to all who knew him.

Anna Magdalena Oswald Gneiting

Read about a twenty-year-old mother who drove away wild animals with a broom on her Coltman, Idaho, homestead in the 1890’s.  With her husband, Abe, Anna was an early settler whose rock home and barn still stand today on the Coltman Road.

Nephi Otteson Family

Some of the last homesteaders of Bonneville County settled in the foothills east of Idaho Falls, just as the county was being organized.  One of the first was the Nephi Otteson family, who pioneered in a spot they named Ozone.  The settlement grew to over 2,000, then dwindled to practically nothing during the drought of the 1920’s.

Pioneers