The Making of Magic Valley

by Robyn Achilles, Executive Director

Fall is one of my favorite seasons in Idaho. Cold and crisp sunny days, colorful foliage, and sheep running through my town from mountain pastures, fill me with the warmth of harvest time.

Driving to Minidoka, an hour and a half south from my home, I turn off Highway 93 onto Road 25, and some of that warmth is replaced with the unsettled presence of untold histories. I can see far into the distance – all of the way to the eastern mountain range with Cache Peak and down the expansive valley south to Twin Falls.

Fields are abundant with green crops irrigated by canals, and others are in a golden post-harvest state. A truck, its bed overflowing with just-picked sugar beets, turns and slowly lumbers on the road in front of me. I am reminded of the vital role agriculture plays by accounting for half of the valley’s economy.

The October 10, 1942 issue of the historic Irrigator newspaper reported in the article “3-Day Conference to Open on Farm Self-Subsistence”:

As soon as colonist labor becomes available, about 1,000 acres of sagebrush east of the community center and adjacent to the Milner-Gooding canal will be cleared and irrigated by laterals from the canal…crops to be raised here are probably beans, peas, potatoes and alfalfa.

Hanako Wakatsuki-Chong, former Director of Interpretation and Education at Minidoka National Historic Site, once told me, “By turning the arid land into productive agricultural lands through laterals from the canal, Japanese Americans helped make the Magic Valley ‘magical’, and we see the legacy of their work today.”