Historical Marker · No. 23

Idaho's Oldest Town

Franklin County · Idaho

The museum the sign promises began in a store. In 1923 the local pioneer association bought the stone Franklin Cooperative Mercantile Institution building on Main Street, put up by the town's English masons, and filled it with farm and household relics. In 1937 a log Relic Hall went up next door, built on land the association deeded to the state with timber from the Forest Service, and it is the museum today. The 1864 Doney house, moved beside the Hatch House, is among the oldest in Idaho. In 2017 this panel stood off its posts, reported damaged.

What the plaque says

Idaho's Oldest Town Franklin was settled April 14, 1860 by Mormon pioneers. The free local museum exhibits a large collection of tools and relics of pioneer days. The founding of Franklin was part of a well organized plan of Mormon expansion. Church authorities sent the colonists under Thomas Smart from Provo, Utah. Men of many trades were included in order to make the community self-sufficient. From 1874-1877, Franklin was the busy terminus of the Utah Northern Railroad where freight for the Montana mines reloaded for the long wagon haul north. 23 Text prepared by the Idaho Historical Society Marker made & installed by Idaho Transportation Department

Where it stands

42.01405, -111.80413 · Directions

Worth the stop nearby

Preston and Napoleon Dynamite — 6.5 mi
A farm town in the north end of Cache Valley that a former student turned into a set in the summer of 2003, without changing much of anything.
Boa Ogoi (Bear River Massacre Site) — 10 mi
The Northwestern Band bought back the ground where its people were killed in 1863, and is turning farm fields back into the river bottom they knew.
Tony Grove Lake — 12 mi
A glacial alpine lake at 8,100 feet surrounded by wildflower meadows
Beaver Mountain Ski Area — 14 mi
A family-owned ski hill that has been run by the same family since 1939

More markers nearby

← All historical markers