College of Southern Idaho

The museum the sign mentions began in a jeweler's backyard. Norman Herrett, who ran a jewelry store in Twin Falls, built an observatory beside his house in 1952 and filled a museum on Kimberly Road with exhibits and a planetarium projector he made himself. In 1972 he agreed to give his collections to the young college in return for a building, and the Herrett Center opened on campus in 1980, soon after his death. The college itself had begun in borrowed rooms, holding its first classes at Twin Falls High School.

What the plaque says

College of Southern Idaho In 1964, Twin Falls County voters established a community college, and Jerome County soon voted to join their college district. Started in 1965 as part of a state and national effort to expand local educational opportunity, College of Southern Idaho arts, science, and vocational-technical programs also provide related community services for this area. In 1968, a modern campus was occupied a mile west of here, with a civic auditorium and a museum facility incorporated into that site. 411 Text prepared by the Idaho Historical Society Marker made & installed by Idaho Transportation Department

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Perrine Bridge — steps away
  Four hundred and eighty-six feet of air between deck and river, and the one span in the country you may jump from without asking.
• Shoshone Falls — 2.7 mi
  Higher than Niagara, and turned up and down on a schedule. What reaches the rim is whatever the canals leave.
• Minidoka National Historic Site — 12 mi
  The prisoners built a board for the names of their sons in the Army. When the camp was given away as farms, the board was lost.
• Box Canyon Springs — 20 mi
  The eleventh-largest spring in the United States, pouring from the head of a dead-end canyon with water that sank into the lava far to the northeast.

More markers nearby

• Shoshone Falls — steps away
• Emigrant Road — 1.5 mi
• Hansen Bridge — 8.2 mi
• Prehistoric Hunters — 9.7 mi