Almo, Idaho

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Almo is a very small unincorporated community in Cassia County, Idaho, United States. It is a short distance away from the City of Rocks National Reserve, a 14,300-acre (58 km2) area with granite columns as much as 600 feet (180 m) high. Almo is renowned for its scenic, historic and geologic significance.[citation needed]

Almo is part of the Burley, Idaho Micropolitan Statistical Area.

History

Many pioneers followed the Oregon Trail west in the middle of the 19th century, and passed by the future site of Almo. Several of these pioneers wrote letters home describing their encounters with Native Americans. Although these accounts tended to be exaggerated by participants, there is historical evidence of several small incidents that took place from 1860-1862.[1]

The Legend

In 1861 a wagon train of 300 emigrants was attacked after leaving their camp on Almo Creek. The Indians laid siege to wagon train. The emigrants had no water within the encircled wagons. The emigrants tried to dig wells within the circle, but no water was encountered. After 4 days they turned their stock loose. Two days later the emigrants ran out of ammunition. The evening before the final attack, the guide escaped with a young woman. Later a man and 2 women escaped into the sagebrush. One of the women took her baby with her, carrying it’s blanket with her teeth while she crawled through the sagebrush on all fours. The remaining emigrants were killed by the Indians when their ammunition ran out. The guide and young women made their way south to the Mormon settlement of Brigham City. A rescue/salvage party was organized and headed north. They picked up the man and 2 women survivors at the narrows of the Raft River. when the rescue party reached the wagon train, they found the defenders dead, wagons looted, and no Indians. The dead emigrants were buried in the dry wells. The rescue party salvaged the iron from the wagons and returned to Utah.


However, Almo's most famous historical event, the Almo Massacre of 1861, has been viewed with skepticism in recent years. In 1938, the Sons and Daughters of Idaho Pioneers paid for and erected a marker in remembrance of the massacre, in which a wagon train of nearly 300 pioneers was surrounded and slaughtered by Indians. However, the earliest written record of this event is from 1927, and the total absence of information about either the slaughtered pioneers or the six survivors has led the Idaho State Historical Society to recommend the removal of the marker.[2][3]

Establishment of Almo

In 1871 James Q. Shirley and Lou Sweetzer drove a herd of Texas cattle into the Raft River Valley where they founded the Keogh Ranch. By 1875 they were operating 2000 head of cattle at the headwaters of the Raft River. In that same year Shirley fenced the Big Cove as a pasture for his saddle horses. Shirley's employee John Stines built a cabin on the biggest creek (Almo Creek) with logs he had cut in the Almo Park and dragged to the building site with a team of oxen in 1877. Stines sold his claim to Henry D Durfee who moved his family to the claim in 1879. A year earlier (1878) Myron B Durfee (Henry D Durfee's brother) settled on Almo Creek. Myron operated the first mercantile establishment and later the first post office (1881) from a building near his home. That same year James T. Taylor, Lee Owsley and William Miller arrived, but only Owsley stayed.

Almo was established around a post office in 1881. It had previously been part of a ranch belonging to Myron B. Durfee and had often been considered to be in Utah.[4] By 1890, 40 of the 55 families in the Almo vicinity belonged to the LDS Church, and most claimed English or Scandinavian ancestry. Almo at the turn of the century boasted a store, a post office, a school, a brass band, a theatrical group, three saloons, and a welfare society. Population reached 260 by 1920. This was the peak of Almo's population growth. Population declined in the years to follow, as less land was available to homestead.[5]

References

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  4. Andrew Jenson. Encyclopedic History of the Church. (Salt Lake City: Deseret News Press, 1941) p. 12
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External links

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