Keefer's Island

Keefer’s Island occupies 1.85 acres about ¼ mile south, downstream from John’s Hole on the Snake River, and was named for Fred W. Keefer of a prominent early Eagle Rock, now Idaho Falls, family. Fred was one of seven children of William and Eldora Keefer. William Walker Keefer came from Pennsylvania to Eagle Rock in 1879 at age 27, married Pennsylvania teacher Eldora Virginia Shoemaker in 1886, and after arriving worked as a railroad bridge construction superintendent before later building railroad shops, the city’s first steel bridge, and the dam across the Snake River below the Broadway Bridge. In 1939 Fred Keefer filed a mining claim on the island and built a 14’ x 22’ one-room cabin from Douglas fir logs cut on the South Fork of the Snake River and floated downstream to the island two or three at a time, towed by a rowboat. The cabin had a shingled roof, brick and stone chimney, cement chinking, and walls varnished inside and out. On December 7, 1962, a Quit Claim Deed between the City of Idaho Falls and Fred W. Keefer transferred his home and other improvements to the city for one dollar, with the stipulation that the island be known as Keefer’s Island forever. The City of Idaho Falls received a Land Patent for the island from the Department of Interior on January 15, 1963. The Keefer family was a potent force in the growth and development of the community, linking its primitive past and progressive present.

Idaho Falls, Idaho · United States