Paris

The town was named for the man who laid it out. Charles C. Rich, the apostle who led the colonizers in, brought Frederick T. Perris, a civil engineer, to survey the townsite, and the name came to be spelled like the French city. Rich recalled taking fifty men with wagons and baggage over the mountains from Franklin. The first winters were as hard as the sign says: his son Edward wrote that in 1864 and 1865 provisions were scarce and people suffered greatly. A statue of Rich stands beside the tabernacle he did not live to see finished.

What the plaque says

Paris This pioneer Idaho town was founded Sept. 26, 1863, when a wagon train brought more than 30 families of Mormon colonizers. More pioneers soon followed, some living in huts of quaking aspen and others building log cabins for the mild first winter. Next spring 700 more people arrived in the valley. The second winter was terrible, but the settlers persevered. They thought they were in Utah until an 1872 boundary survey showed this was part of Idaho. When Bear Lake county was created in 1875, Paris became county seat. 275 Text prepared by the Idaho Historical Society Marker made & installed by Idaho Transportation Department

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Bear Lake National Wildlife Refuge — 3.4 mi
  The Bear River crosses this marsh twice: once in a canal into Bear Lake, and once in another canal on its way back out.
• National Oregon/California Trail Center — 8.6 mi
  Emigrants came down off Big Hill and camped in the clover here. Brigham Young renamed the town; the trail center brings the camp back in costume.
• Minnetonka Cave — 11 mi
  Found by a grouse hunter, named first for a porcupine and then in a language from the far side of the Rockies. Five kinds of bats winter inside.
• Beaver Mountain Ski Area — 19 mi
  A family-owned ski hill that has been run by the same family since 1939

More markers nearby

• Paris Tabernacle — steps away
• British Settlers — 2.9 mi
• Smith's Trading Post — 7.7 mi
• Bank Robbers — 8.0 mi