Eagle Rock Ferry

The sign gives the ferry to one man; it had two. Harry Rickard and William Hickman began building it in May 1863, Hickman finishing the boat while Rickard scouted a road to bring the Montana traffic to it, and the first wagons crossed on June 20. Within about a year they sold out to Matt Taylor's company, which put a toll bridge across the narrow gorge nine miles downstream in 1865. When the bridge opened, the ferry people moved down to it and brought the name with them, building the first store partly from old ferry-boat timbers.

What the plaque says

Eagle Rock Ferry On June 20, 1863, Bill Hickman started a ferry 9 miles up Snake River for thousands of gold hunters headed for mines that now are in Montana. Named for an eagle that had a nest on a rock there, his ferry flourished until James Madison Taylor replaced it two years later with a bridge across a narrow lava gorge here. Idaho Falls eventually grew up around Taylor's bridge. 224 Text prepared by the Idaho Historical Society Marker made & installed by Idaho Transportation Department

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Menan Buttes — 21 mi
  Two volcanoes built where lava ran into the Snake River, and one of them open to walk around the rim.

More markers nearby

• Taylor's Bridge — steps away
• Elephant Hunters — 16 mi
• Lava Formations — 17 mi
• Menan Buttes — 23 mi