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Description of Pictures: Frankly, I really hadn't expected to see anything in Twin Falls other than a Costco. But as I drove over a bridge, I saw the gorge of the Snake River and was suddenly impressed. Steep cliffs were on either side of a beautiful valley. The next morning, I went down to Centennial Park and passed a waterfall. Then I drove to the overlook and saw a sign announcing that this was where Evel Knieval tried a famous rocket-powered sky-cycle jump across the Snake River Canyon. On September 8 1874 (and, yes, there were two plaques commemorating this event), he launched at a point where the canyon was 1700-feet-wide and 500-feet-deep. A malfunction caused his chute to open too quickly and he landed unharmed in the gorge itself. You can still see his earthen ramp in the distance. While walking over to get a better picture of the ramp, I saw people jumping off the bridge into the canyon. They were parachutists. This is apparently the only bridge in the country where you can regularly jump so a dedicated group of idiots do. I watched maybe a dozen jump and land, only to climb back up, repack their chutes and do it again. I was impressed!
While the major water fall shown in spectacular, the city-promoted Shoshone Falls were a major disappointment. The pictures show these fabulous falls that they marker as "The Niagara of the West". When you see them, though, they're just a trickle of water. They acknowledge that the falls haven't done much of anything since 1997 due to droughts and sucking out so much water for agriculture. All of the literature, however, shows the falls in 1997. Fortunately, there wasn't anyone there to collect the $3 fee to see the "falls" so it wasn't too much of a rip off but it was still very disappointing.
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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.
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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
2FALL_030525_004_STITCH.JPG: This wonderful waterfall was located just off the road which took me into the valley.
2FALL_030525_122.JPG: In the distance, you can see the earthen ramp that Evel Knievel used for his jump.
2FALL_030525_132.JPG: This is one of the boats that picks up parachutists for a fee
2FALL_030525_142.JPG: The first time I realized people were parachuting from the bridge was when I was taking a picture of a bridge and thought I saw a big bird diving by it. Nope, parachutists. I saw maybe a dozen jumpers in the hour I was there. Here's a three-sequence photo of a jumper. Pausing on the bridge before jumping, the jump itself, and then after the parachute opens.
2FALL_030525_144.JPG: You can see the guy by the bridge as he falls
2FALL_030525_146.JPG: The same guy after he's fallen and his chute has opened. The trip down from the bridge is pretty quick. The trip up, however, is either a slow mountain-climb up the slopes or else being picked up a by a boat on the river and, for a fee, being taken back to the park where I took the pictures of the valley before.
2FALL_030525_153.JPG: Another guy falling. His buddy watches him from atop the bridge.
2FALL_030525_156.JPG: Here's the jumper with one of the pick-up boats. Most of the jumpers did not avail themselves to the boat and climbed up the slopes on their own. That process took about 20 minutes.
2FALL_030525_180.JPG: The trickle in the center of the photo is the Shoshone Falls which some years is supposedly impressive. However, due to drought, continuous demand for water for agricultural crops and people, and rerouting of water for power-generating purposes, most of the water has been sucked out of the falls. They had a beautiful display in 1997 but nothing since. You can imagine how disappointed I was to see this after having been promised beautiful falls.
2FALL_030525_192.JPG: Bruce Guthrie in Twin Falls, Idaho
Wikipedia Description: Twin Falls, Idaho
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Twin Falls is the county seat and largest city of Twin Falls County, Idaho, United States. The population was 34,469 at the 2000 census; a 2006 estimate found 40,380 people.
Twin Falls is the largest city of Idaho's Magic Valley region and the seventh largest in the state. As the largest city in a 100-mile (166-kilometer) radius, Twin Falls serves as a regional commercial center for both south-central Idaho and northeastern Nevada.
Twin Falls is the principal city of the Twin Falls, ID Micropolitan Statistical Area - the state's largest - which officially includes Jerome and Twin Falls Counties. The resort community of Jackpot, Nevada, in Elko County is unofficially considered part of the greater Twin Falls area.
History:
Humans may have been present in the Twin Falls area as long as 14,500 years ago. Excavations at Wilson Butte Cave near Twin Falls in 1959 revealed evidence of human activity, including arrowheads, that rank among the oldest dated artifacts in North America . Later native American tribes predominant the area included the Northern Shoshone and Bannock.
The first people of European ancestry to visit the Twin Falls area are believed to be members of a group led by Wilson Price Hunt, which attempted to blaze an all-water trail westward from St. Louis, Missouri, to Astoria, Oregon, in 1811 and 1812. Hunt's expedition met with disaster when much of his expedition was destroyed and one man was killed in rapids on the Snake River known as Caldron Linn near present-day Murtaugh. Hunt and the surviving members of his expedition completed the journey to Astoria by land.
In 1812 and 1813, Robert Stuart successfully led an overland expedition eastward from Astoria to St. Louis which passed through the Twin Falls area. Stuart's route formed the basis of what became the Oregon Trail. Some 150 years later, Robert Stuart Junior High School in Twin Falls was named in his honor.
While other explorers passed through the Twin Falls area throughout the first half of the 19th Century, none saw fit to stay in what was then considered a particularly inhospitable region of the American West.
The first permanent settlement in the area was a stage stop established in 1864 at Rock Creek near the present-day townsite. By 1890 there were a handful of successful agricultural operations in the Snake River Canyon, but the lack of infrastructure and the canyon's geography made irrigating the dry surrounding area improbable at best.
To address this issue, in 1900 the Twin Falls Land and Water Company was formed largely to build an irrigation canal system for the area. Three years later I. B. Perrine, who had been a successful farmer and rancher in the Snake River Canyon, obtained private financing under the provisions of the Carey Act of 1894 to build Milner Dam on the Snake River near Caldron Linn. Completed in 1905, Milner Dam and its accompanying canals made commercial irrigation outside the Snake River Canyon practical for the first time. As a result Perrine is generally credited as the founder of Twin Falls.
Twin Falls city was founded in 1904 as a planned community, designed by celebrated Franco-American architect Emmanuel Louis Masqueray, with proceeds from sales of townsite lots going toward construction of irrigation canals. The city is named for a nearby waterfall on the Snake River of the same name. In 1907 Twin Falls became the seat of the newly-formed Twin Falls County.
The original townsite follows a unique design. It is laid out on northeast-to-southwest and northwest-to-southeast roads. The northwest-to-southeast roads were numbered and called avenues, while the northeast-to-southwest roads were numbered and called streets. Only two central streets, the northwest-to-southeast Main Avenue and the northeast-to-southwest Shoshone Street, were named. It is purported that the reason this was done was to allow sun to come into every room in the home at some point during the day. This system created situations where one side of a street may have an entirely different address than the other, and where the corner of "3rd and 3rd," for example, was in more than one location. In 2003 the numbered northeast-to-southwest streets were renamed to alleviate decades of confusion. Later city roads, such as Blue Lakes Boulevard, Addison Avenue and Washington Street, are laid out in standard north-south and east-west orientations.
After Milner Dam was constructed agricultural production in south-central Idaho increased substantially. Twin Falls became a major regional economic center serving the agriculture industry, a role which it has sustained to the present day. The city became a processing center for several agricultural commodities, notably beans and sugar beets. In later years other food processing operations augmented the local economy. By 1960 Twin Falls had become one of Idaho's largest cities even though its origins were still within living memory for many.
Twin Falls became the center of national attention in September 1974 thanks to an attempt by Evel Knievel to jump the Snake River Canyon in a specially-modified rocket cycle. Watched by millions on television, the attempt ultimately failed due to high winds and a premature deployment of Knievel's parachute. The foundation of the launch ramp, which lies on private land, can still be seen.
During the last quarter of the 20th Century, gradual diversification of the agriculture-based economy allowed the city to continue to grow. Major Twin Falls employers in 2006 included computer maker Dell, Inc., Glanbia., and Jayco, a recreational vehicle manufacturer.
In recent years Twin Falls has become quite multicultural. Thanks in large part to a refugee center operated by the College of Southern Idaho, since 1995 significant numbers of people from Bosnia and Herzegovina and the former Soviet Union have settled in Twin Falls. The city also has a sizeable Hispanic population.
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