01Summary
A waterfall on the Snake River 212 feet high, taller than Niagara Falls. It lay several miles north of the main wagon road, and some emigrants heard its roar and made the side trip to find it. Today irrigation takes much of its water in summer.
02History
At Shoshone Falls the Snake River drops 212 feet over a rim about 900 feet wide, higher than Niagara Falls. People often call it the 'Niagara of the West.' Salmon swimming up from the Pacific could not get past it, and Shoshone and Bannock people fished for them below the falls. Traders, trappers, missionaries and settlers passed by for years without writing about it. Even John C. Frémont's survey party missed it in 1843.
The main wagon road ran south of the canyon. 'The road does not pass there,' Major Osborne Cross of the Army wrote in 1849, which was 'probably the reason why it is so little known.' Some travelers heard the roar in the distance and hiked out to find it. The first known written description came from Augustin-Magloire Blanchet, a Canadian priest who was the new Catholic bishop of Walla Walla, who crossed with a wagon train in 1847. He called them the Canadian Falls.
In August 1849 a guide with the Army's Regiment of Mounted Riflemen, who had been shown the falls by an Indian, led Lieutenant Andrew Lindsay and George Gibbs, a New York artist traveling with the troops, to see them.
They climbed down to the foot of the falls and agreed that the falls 'equalled in grandeur, in proportion to the column of water, the Niagara Falls,' Cross wrote. Gibbs sketched the falls that day, and his drawings are believed to be the earliest pictures of them. The two men renamed them the Great Shoshonie Falls.
In 1905 the gates closed on Milner Dam, upstream, and the river began flowing into canals that turned the sagebrush plain around Twin Falls into farms. Irrigation still takes much of the water. Idaho Power also runs a power plant at the falls. The falls thunder in spring and early summer, when melting snow fills the river, but in late summer and fall the flow over the rim can shrink to a trickle.
03Today
The City of Twin Falls runs a park on the canyon rim, on land that Frederick and Martha Adams gave the city in 1932. The main viewing platform is a short walk from the parking lot, and the falls are best in spring and early summer.
05Stops nearby
The Oregon Trail ran about 2,170 miles from Independence, Missouri, to Oregon City. The stops just before and after this one are below. You can also find Shoshone Falls on the interactive map.