A Plethora of History (08-28-17)

After leaving Lava Hot Springs, our genealogy trail led us to the Idaho Falls area. In addition to exploring, we were on the hunt for any information about Paul’s family.



We alternated our visits to cemeteries with visits to museums and historical societies.

Fun With Flags

Among the museums we visited was the Museum of Idaho.  We mistakenly assumed this would have a lot of information about the state and it’s history.

It did have one area that focused on the state, where we learned that on June 14, 1777, it was decided that our country needed a flag. It took years to agree upon a basic design, and soon thereafter, that design was made obsolete by the addition of more states into the union.

In 1817 they decided that it was not practical to keep adding a stripe and a star for every state, so the decision was made to leave the number of stripes at 13, and just add stars. It was still a bit of a mess because it wasn’t until 1912 that the size, shape and arrangement of the stars was standardized.


The rest of the museum was dedicated to revolving exhibits.  Right now, it’s all about space. When I heard that I could ride a space bicycle for $1, I said “sign me up”.

Once I was strapped in, the machine started spinning, simulating gravity. To me, it felt like being on an amusement park ride, and not in a good way.  After pedaling for about 30 seconds, I had had enough. 

Paul and I never looked so good!

Paul’s great grandfather used to have a farm in Dubois, so we headed that way to see what we could find out about it.  Being a tiny town, the historical society building is only open a few hours a day.  While we waited, we took the Scenic Byway.

It wasn’t all that scenic.  We did see some old farm relics, but mostly we watched the smoke from one of the nearby wildfires.

We also drove through an active fire area but I didn’t get a decent picture.  The wildfires are tough this year and might interfere with our plans for visiting Oregon.

Our patience paid off,  and back at the historical society, the girl who worked there said that yes, she did know some Lairds in the area, in fact, Ellen Laird had just been there a few minutes ago. She was nice enough to call her, and even though it was her birthday, Ellen came to chat with us.

An hour later, after comparing notes about the family, she called her daughter Brenda, and we spent an hour or so with her before they took us out to the family cemetery.

Before leaving the area, we had to check out the Potato Museum. They actually have a clever phone/camera stand in front of the museum so you can take a decent selfie.

I never actually thought about what potatoes look like in the ground, so I learned something right away.

I also found out that almost all Idaho potatoes are the Russet Burbank variety, and they all originally came from a single seed that Luthor Burbank found growing in a garden in New England in the 1800s.

Mr. Potato Head has had a long history, and is still in production.  There was a kids area where you could put one together. The original Mr. Potato Head kit contained just the push pins and kids used a real potato as the body, but with so many complaints of rotting potatoes, they decided to supply the plastic body too.

Having been to many, many, museums, I try to find something that’s different or unusual that might be of interest to me. At the Bannock County Museum, one of the interesting displays was a case full of police evidence. Kinda strange.

I always get nostalgic when I see historic Gillette products.  My dad retired from Gillette after about 40 years.