St Anthony High School - Tattler Yearbook (St Anthony, ID)

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THE TATTLER

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THE TATTLER l’age Right

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THE TATTLER Early Days in St. Anthony The history of the development of the towns and cities of the West perforce has been intimately connected with some form of production of Mother Earth herself, and it might be truthfully said of them that they are close to the soil. The earlier settlements of the West were founded, had their being, and in some instances continue to have their being solely because of some ore strike; and many of this kind have come and gone. The early pioneer was lured westward by the desire for sudden riches and the easier these could be ob- tained the more alluring was the field. Wherever these attractions proved to be lasting and mines of importance were de- veloped, cities of considerable proportions quickly grew; and wherever large urban populations are, there also is the demand for the necessities of life, and the trades- man and the producer of food stuffs is drawn there by natural laws. Cities, to be permanent, must have rural communities not too far distant, and the pioneer who came, not to hunt gold, but to supply the wants of the gold hunter, oftentimes reap- ed a greater harvest than did his more spectacular predecessor. These later com- ers saw possibilities of wealth produced by Mother Earth that were beneath the vision of the true fortune seeker. As a result, in those sections favored by climate and soil this second classs of pioneers, the agricul- tural pioneers, soon began to supplant the wandering gold hunter and to establish a community that was permanent and to make a living, not with the pick, shovel and gold pan, but with the plow, harrow and reaper. It was soon learned that produc- tion of crops successfully in arid regions required that some sort of artificial irri- gation be devised, and the scheme of di- verting waters from the numerous streams by means of ditches and conducting it to the various farms came about. This method of supplying the necessary element of successful cultivation, the only one which nature had failed to supply in this region, produced a second crop of pioneers, those who settled upon a quarter sec- tion of government land and lived in a one room log or board house, and as has been said by some one ‘‘bet Uncle Sam $16.00 that he could subsist long enough to earn a patent to 160 acres of land.” Re- versing the procedure of the mining boom wherein the congested population drew a producing class, the producing class drew the urban population, and towns grew on a solid foundation and have continued to grow because of a permanent and lasting .support. St. Anthony is of this latter class town. Its history has been closely connected with and still depends upon the successful cul- tivation, by means of artificial irrigation, of thousands of acres of otherwise sterile soil. St. Anthony probably would never have come into being had it not been close- ly, yes intimately, connected with an irri- gation enterprise. The founders of the town saw in the site on which it was lo- cated possibilities because it was the natur- al center of a thriving rural community to be built. To few persons is given the pow- er of visualization and to this alone is the location of St. Anthony due. The name St. Anthony was chosen because of a similar- ity of appearance of Snake River at this point to the Mississippi River at the Falls of St. Anthony, near St. Paul, Minnesota, a part of the country with which one of the founders (Mr. Moon) was familiar. The only possible reason for the establish- ment of a town at this point was the fact that it had been determined to construct the St. Anthony Canal to furnish addition- al water for irrigating the then sandy waste now known as Egin Bench, where a few settlers had already located and had taken out a ditch of sufficient capacity to indicate what the soil might produce with the aid of water for irrigation. But it re- mained for the St. Anthony Canal to pour enough water onto and into the “Bench” to prove conclusively the value of the land. The townsite was filed on as a desert entry and patent obtained thereon from the Gov- ernment by proof made possible by water from the above canal. There being at that time no means of communication between the two sides of the river at any point north of Idaho Falls save by precarious [Continuer on Page Fourteen] Page Ten