An Idaho community history book of the Council, Idaho area. There once was a time when millions of square miles of virgin wilderness offered opportunity to anyone with the raw ambition to exploit it. Men and women found themselves in a life and death struggle thousands of miles from the nearest road, house, or farm. Big dreams were shouldered into mountains to wring out their riches. . The land was occupied by natives whose culture was so fundamentally different that it would never be reconciled with the whirlwind of European culture that defied its very foundation. This book is about the infancy and childhood of a small community in west-central Idaho, and the human Landmarks that made it what it is today.It is a story of some of the most dramatic changes in the history of mankind when a person born into a world where steam locomotives were the fastest machines on earth would live to see a man walk on the moon.We all look back on our childhoods as a time when we were molded into who we are. Landmarks about the childhood of an Idaho community. Knowing the year something happened in the history of a community is like knowing the age of a child when an event occurred in their life. Paying attention to dates gives you the ability to associate them with other things that happened during that time. The fascinating story of our past will become more real and interesting. A fascinating look back across time and space into a time when railroads were the most exciting mode of transportation and small communities like Council, Idaho held a mystic and charm that made people ride thousands of miles to become a part of. The history is well documented and footnoted. A meticulous work. --EJ Thornton - best selling author I chose to narrow the scope of this book to the area between Mesa, Price Valley, and the Seven Devils Mining District. I did this for a couple of reasons. First, the stories of Indian Valley and the Meadows Valley are somewhat separate from that of the Council Valley and its more closely associated areas. A big reason was that the size and complexity of the story was already intimidating, and I needed to limit the parameters. I covered the Fruitvale area in more detail because there has never been much information gathered and written about it before. I had access to historical accounts from family and friends. The names of people as printed here may be different from their spellings elsewhere. Standardized spelling didn't come along until fairly recently, and people before that time were on their own to spell words including names as they sounded. The fact that most people were illiterate adds to the problem. Everything in this book came from a human being; all history is someone s version of what happened. Often the stories here were filtered through the viewpoint of several people. One thing that became obvious early on in my research was that people often choose to pass on a good yarn rather than a not-so-exciting true account. This has led to several, inaccurate, local myths. I have tried to use terms such as was said to or was thought to when I was not sure of the accuracy of the information with which I had to work. I have also used terms such as 'evidently' or 'apparently' to indicate that I was drawing my own conclusions from sketchy evidence. When there was more than one version of the same story, I chose the one that was supported by the most evidence, or I included both versions. Another factor in writing history is interpretation. Historian Shelby Foote once said, 'Facts are just the bare bones out of which truth is made.' People often see the same event differently. Even hindsight changes with time. It has been said that what we preserve as history not only tells about the past, it tells a great deal about us and the culture in which we live. Current conditions and social attitudes concerning subjects such as race relations, minorities, natural resources and more have obviously influenced my writing here. You will notice that I have called this a general history. I'm proud to say that it is the first comprehensive, general history of the Council area. Used Book in Good Condition