Craters of the Moon Historic Context Statements

Settlement Patterns in the Craters of the Moon Region, 1879-1933:
SUMMARY

Settlement patterns on the Snake River Plain involved the gradual shift in image of the plain from negative to positive, from an inhospitable, barren desert to a place capable of supporting permanent, agricultural communities. Beginning in 1860 Mormon settlers began this process when they established settlements in southeastern Idaho. In the 1870s and 1880s, they expanded their presence farther north in the upper Snake River Valley. Overcrowding in Utah, new lands for the taking in Idaho, new railway service up the valley, and religious incentives were the motivations for Mormons. A broader and more encompassing force appeared with the advent of mining in southern Idaho in 1862 when gold was discovered in the Boise Basin and lead-silver in the Wood River region in 1880. Typical "boom" communities rose up near the mines, but so did a more permanent population composed of ranching and farming enclaves. Similar communities grew up in the Little Wood River Valley and the Big and Little Lost River valleys in the late 1870s and 1880s in response to mining. Settlement also owed a debt to cattlemen and sheepmen who trailed their herds across the Snake River Plain around this time, some of them establishing small operations in vicinity of mines. The completion of the Oregon Short Line in 1884 across the plain further aided settlement and communication with the more remote sections of the plain. But the most important element contributing to settlement was irrigation. Beginning with the Carey Act in 1894, irrigation projects transformed the desert, in places, into a garden and led to the dramatic increase in the state's population by the 1920s.

Within the Craters country some fragments of these settlement patterns appeared and assist in better understanding this aspect of its history. Stock raisers trailed herds through the Little Cottonwood Creek drainage in the 1870s and 1880s, and ranchers from the Lost River country were among the first known to venture into the lava fields in 1879 and the 1880s in search of water and grass for livestock. The ranchers' interest stemmed from the hope that this rather mysterious landscape possessed some hidden riches. Except for these brief encounters, settlers ignored the lava fields for the rest of the nineteenth century, it seems. Between 1903 and 1919, at least twelve homestead claims were filed in the northern section of the monument, those lands in and surrounding the Little Cottonwood Creek canyon. Evidently severe environmental conditions caused most of these claims to end in failure by the 1920s; the remaining were converted to Park Service ownership by 1933. Virtually no physical evidence of these endeavors remains. In the monument's vast lava fields, perhaps an unlikely country to find elements of settlement of any kind, homesteaders collected firewood, and a nearby rancher constructed a wagon road out to Little Prairie Waterhole where he built a cement water trough for his livestock between 1920 and 1925.

As a historic theme, settlement encompasses the interrelated themes of commercial development, in the form of mining and ranching, and agricultural development, in the form of irrigated farming. To understand the threads of these historical themes at Craters of the Moon it is necessary to weave them into a larger historical tapestry. Considered separately the activities of ranchers, miners, and homesteaders make little sense at Craters of the Moon. But viewed in a broader scope, they suggest that this remote lava landscape was related to the early settlement of the upper Snake River Plain. As each of the forces that brought people to the region occurred, some of their influence could be seen in the lava country.