Idaho Falls Regional Airport history

The Snake River that was flowing across the region was proving to be a problem and in the year 1864, a ferry was made to assist settlers in crossing the long 9 miles to the North, the current Idaho Falls.

The bridge that Matt Taylor built had finished construction in 1865 and by the end of that year, a private bank, small hotel, livery stable, eating house, post office, and stage station had been constructed near the bridge.

In 1866, the town was named Eagle Rock.

On a Sunday night in 1885, residents gathered in the Brewery Saloon where they appointed twenty volunteers to serve on the first fire department.

The town was renamed in 1890 for the low but wide (1,500 feet [460 metres]) cataract in the river (now a source of hydropower), and it developed first as a railroad division point and later as a centre of irrigated farming.

The community was originally known as Taylor’s Crossing, then Eagle Rock until its name was changed to Idaho Falls, in 1891.

On June 22, 1895, the Great Feeder (“the world’s then-largest irrigation canal”), started to reroute water from the Snake River, which helped turn some of the desert of Idaho Falls, into green farmland.

Idaho Falls, city, seat (1911) of Bonneville county, southeastern Idaho, United States, on the upper Snake River.

The Works Progress Administration built the superbly crafted log airplane hangar in 1936.

In 1949, the Atomic Energy Commission opened the Nuclear Reaction Testing Station in the desert, west of Idaho Falls.

On December 20, 1951, a nuclear reactor built at the Idaho Falls site “produced useful energy for the first time in history.” More than 50 nuclear reactors were successfully built at the testing station near Idaho Falls, while today, only three remain active.

On July 17, 1955, at 11 p.m., an electrical engineer at the Testing Station flipped a switch and the nearby town of Arco became the first city powered by nuclear energy.