# 370, July 8, 2005
TWIN FALLS, IDAHO: If you’ve never seen the Snake River first hand, this is a good place to start. Of course the river is about 500 feet below this town, at the bottom of a canyon. There’s a magnificent bridge across the canyon heading north that connects these folks to civilization in the rest of Idaho. Otherwise about the only way out of town is by way of Nevada.
The Oregon Trail ran near here, and those old pioneers had a rough go across this barren land. West of here about 50 miles is a little town called Glenns Ferry and those folks forded the Snake River there, long before anyone thought of building a ferryboat. We have it easy today with highways and airplanes; it’s impossible to imagine how rough those folks had it. There was quite a few that entered that river that never made it across.
Water from the Snake is the lifeblood for this part of Idaho. And if it wasn’t for the big dams upstream, it would have dried up by April. You look around and any place that’s green you can bet is being irrigated from the river. That water grows great potatoes and a whole line up of other crops from alfalfa to corn to barley. That eminent domain decision the Supreme Court handed down didn’t seem to upset folks much here, because it applied to land. But try to take away a man’s water rights, and you’ll have a real fight.
The big news out here was finding that little girl up in Coeur d’Alene. Folks are so mad at that Duncan fellow for what he did to Shasta Groene, they almost forget he murdered 4 people.
Yesterday, bin Laden struck again. This time it was London. He seems to be working his way west… You know, if we could just trick him into eating at a Denny’s Restaurant, I think we would get him. Those big countries meeting over in Scotland promised to send $3 Billion to the Palestinians and $50 Billion to Africa, even after the attack. They tell me there’s quite a few Muslims living in those places. Wonder how much bin Laden has donated to help those folks.
Historic quotes from Will Rogers:
“I would just go… out to Idaho every few years… Boise is a mighty pretty little Town; I been there. Ground kinder sandy, built in on a right pretty creek, bluff up on one side.” Saturday Evening Post, Feb. 27, 1932
“POCATELLO, Idah It took me forty-eight States to do it, but I finally arrived in one where every one knows who one of their Senators is. I go to Borah’s home town (Boise) tomorrow. I want to see this place before it is made a shrine for honoring the only man in public life in his time with independent thought, when everybody else’s ideas are as standardized as Ford parts.” DT #201, March 18, 1927
“Calvin (President Coolidge) did a mighty fine job of dam dedicating here this afternoon (at Globe, Arizona). He made a dam good speech favoring dams.
The dam will open up 1,000,000 acres of new land, and there is 1,000,000 farmers starving to death all over our country on farms that’s all ready open, so it all depends on where you live, as to how you look at it.” DT #1125, March 4, 1930