New Plymouth

The plan is still visible from the air. Smythe laid the town out as a double horseshoe, open to the north toward the railroad and the river, wrapped in an 80-foot boulevard park, and colonists who bought 20 acres of farmland at $20 an acre also got a one-acre home lot on the horseshoe. He first showed his map at the Sherman House in Chicago on April 25, 1894, the date cut into the 1981 stone, and Edward Everett Hale suggested the name. The three markers here, from 1968, 1981 and the state, tell the founding three ways.

What the plaque says

No. 352 Erected 1968 New Plymouth In 1810-18 Francois Payette, Donald McKenzie, John Day, Jack Weiser, a Mr. Whitman and others, named this valley and river "Payette." In 1862 David Bivens' stage station was erected and Nathan Falk's store was opened in 1876. William E. Smythe, of the National Irrigation Congress, sent a group to locate a townsite with a view to opening an irrigation project. In April 1895 New Plymouth was chosen. A postoffice was established 1896, Veasey and Jennie Stovel in charge. Payette County New Plymouth Idaho Committee approved April 25, 1894 Chicago Report on colony site May 28, 1894 Chicago New Plymouth Colony Articles of incorporation Feb. 15, 1896 Monument dedicated June 14, 1981 New Plymouth In 1894, the National Irrigation Congress designed a model town and canal system New Plymouth was founded to demonstrate it, and farming began here in 1896. Organizers and settlers came from Cleveland, Boston, and Chicago to try out their plan for locating all their farmhouses in a central town. New Plymouth streets and parks still reflect that plan, but small, adjacent farms here have grown into a much larger irrigated tract. 483 Text prepared by the Idaho Historical Society Marker made & installed by Idaho Transportation Department

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Weiser — 20 mi
  Every June the fiddlers come to a farm town on the Snake, and the campground plays all night.

More markers nearby

• Salmon Festival — 6.0 mi
• Snake River — 6.0 mi
• Francois Payette — 8.9 mi
• Marie Dorion — 14 mi