Chesterfield

This panel is gone: HMdb reports it missing, and a 2025 frame shows only the roadside. The town it pointed to survives because the settlers' descendants formed the Chesterfield Foundation in 1980 to buy and restore it. A mistake in the government survey had kept the townsite off the market for years, and in 1890 the brick meetinghouse, built from 1887 to 1892, and a store were the only buildings on it. Some two dozen buildings stand on the original grid, a National Register district, open for free tours in summer.

What the plaque says

Chesterfield In 1879, Mormon farmers from Utah settled Chesterfield, 16 miles north of here. Based on Joseph Smith's Zion Plat, Chesterfield was laid out on an orderly grid of large blocks separated by wide streets with the Meeting House on the highest point. By 1881, its numbers had grown to more than 400. The town thrived for a generation before new trends in farming led to its decline. All but abandoned, houses, buildings, and roads leave behind a footprint of Mormon origins. 337 Text prepared by the Idaho Historical Society Marker made & installed by Idaho Transportation Department

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lava Hot Springs — 7.2 mi
  The pools belong to the state because the springs left the Fort Hall Reservation and Congress handed them to Idaho in 1902.
• Black Canyon of the Bear River — 8.3 mi
  A basalt gorge cut by a river that, most of the year, now runs past it in a pipe.
• Soda Springs Geyser — 14 mi
  Drillers looking for hot water for a swimming pool hit cold soda water under pressure. The town put the geyser on a timer.

More markers nearby

• Hudspeth's Cutoff — 2.4 mi
• Lava Hot Springs — 6.8 mi
• Bear River Lava — 9.0 mi
• John Bidwell — 9.0 mi