by Mary Jane Fritzen
Robert Anderson, a founder of Eagle Rock, had bought the 1863 ferry and established a trading post in 1865 on the rocky banks of the Snake River which became Eagle Rock. He joined his brother-in-law James Madison “Matt” Taylor and William F. Bartlett in chartering and building a toll bridge, which soon replaced the ferry in 1866. Eagle Rock became a regular station for the mail and also a regular stop for Wells Fargo, Ben Holladay, and other stage and freight lines. Robert Anderson was named first postmaster. (Leonard Arrington, “The Promise of Eagle Rock: Idaho Falls, Idaho, 1863-1980,” in Rendezvous, Vol. 18 Spring 1983.)
Robert Anderson had been born and reared on a Kentucky farm, and had also farmed in Missouri. Then the Civil War ended in 1865; Kentucky had been a union state but was sympathetic to the confederate cause. Robert, born in 1833, had not fought in the war because he had been crippled since youth, and relied all his life on crutches. His sister LeGrande had married “Matt” Taylor, who emigrated to Colorado then Idaho. Anderson’s Idaho pioneering was a family affair. Robert did not marry until later in life, when he returned to Missouri to marry a widow Alice Jones Garrard. She then lived with him in Idaho, and on their farm in Missouri..
At the trading post located beside Taylor Toll Bridge, Anderson bought furs from Indians, sold goods to ox-train people going to and from Montana, and bought gold dust, weighed it, shipped it to market, and bought and sold greenbacks. Thus the bank developed. The Ben Holladay Stage maintained stock tenders every ten to fifteen miles. These and trappers were at first his only neighbors, except for Indians. Sagebrush covered the territory. In 1871 Dr. F. V. Hayden, a veteran naturalist, led a government geological survey expedition. He told Anderson the soil was excellent. Wm. Henry Jackson, a photographer accompanied Dr. Hayden, and his photo of Taylor Bridge is the earliest we have. Thomas Moran was official artist of the expedition, and his drawings of Yellowstone along with Jackson’s photographs, were exhibited in Washington D.C., where Congress created Yellowstone National Park on March 1, 1872.
Robert Anderson wrote about favorable opportunities in Idaho, and submitted his promotional letters anonymously for publication in the Kentucky Gazette. Robert was joined in about 1872 by his brother John C. “Jack” Anderson. Matt Taylor sold his share of the bridge to a brother-in-law, Thomas Akers, and bought cattle. The Anderson Brothers (Robert and Jack) went into the merchandising business, as well as banking. Among their customers in the 1870s were stock raisers who moved into the area, a few pioneer truck farmers; and Richard Leigh “Beaver Dick.”
In Captain Bonneville’s County, Edith Lovell published early accounts of the Anderson station. Lt. Gustave C. Doane, who was trying to explore Yellowstone in 1876-77, wrote in his journal: “Jan. 3, At Eagle Rock the stream is shut in by massive walls, and rushes through a gorge about 90 feet wide. A better locality for a bridge could not be imagined. We found mail at the Bridge station and were hospitably entertained by Mr. Anderson, the proprietor of the establishment there.” (CBC 166) J. D. Ellis, a freighter of the seventies described the Eagle Rock stage station as consisting of a three-room log shack which served as a post office, supply store, storage warehouse, saloon, hardware store, armory, bank, and rendezvous for bullwhackers. There were two other log buildings, crude low structures, chinked with adobe. One of these buildings was used as a restaurant, the other became a livery stable. The buildings occupied the area that is now the southwest corner of Capitol Avenue and Broadway.” (CBC 184)
Anderson brothers recognized the great potential for irrigation, and in 1878-79 invested $70,000 to build the large Anderson Canal. Just ten years after the transcontinental railroad was completed in Utah in 1869, the Utah and Northern Railroad pushed into eastern Idaho. Oneida Road Bridge and Ferry Company (which I think is the Anderson Brothers) donated 103 acres plus one hundred feet on each side of the track to the railroad company. In return, the railroad company agreed to carry no freight or passengers across the river until July 1, 1879. (CBC 188) It was an exciting day on June 12, 1879, when the crew of 75 workers completed the railroad bridge at Eagle Rock, and celebrated the first crossing of the Snake River by a train. The railroad bridge was located just a little downstream from the wagon bridge at the spot of the present railroad bridge. Many of the railroad construction workers stayed in the valley as settlers, or returned as soon as their employment was finished. (CBC 190) That next summer Thomas Moran returned to Taylors Bridge. His painting of the “Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone” had been purchased for the unprecedented sum of $10,000 and hung in the capitol at Washington. Now he was
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commissioned to paint the Tetons. (CBC 195) His description of Taylor’s bridge is cold and dreary:
“August 21, 1879. Left Fort Hall... on way to Taylor’s bridge.... Reached Taylors Bridge later in the afternoon 27 miles desolation. Abandoned town, railroad bridge over Snake. Andersons store. Dismal camp. Furious wind all night. Driven sand everywhere almost blinding. Gray dismal morning. Black basalt abomination. Rushing river like Niagara Rapids.” (CBC 194). Beaver Dick was guide for the Moran party.. Robert Anderson foresaw an optimistic future for this valley when irrigation would invite agriculture. However he returned to Kentucky or Missouri, leaving his brother Jack C. Anderson in charge of the store. It was about this time that Robert married the widow Alice Jones Garrard and lived with her in Missouri. They also lived in Eagle Rock, which was renamed Idaho Falls in 1891.
Robert Anderson not only wrote encouraging letters about Eagle Rock’s promise, but also encouraged promising pioneers. One of these was my father’s widowed grandmother, Elizabeth Brunt and her children, particularly George Brunt. On 9 April 1888, he sold her the land upon which she would build a home. The warranty deed from Robert Anderson, Trustee to Elizabeth Brunt reads: “Know all men by these presents, that I, Robert Anderson, Trustee, of Eagle Rock, Bingham County, Idaho Territory, for and in consideration of the sum of thirty five dollars, to me in hand paid by Mrs. Elizabeth Brunt... have granted, bargained and sold... unto said Elizabeth Brunt, her heirs and assigns forever, the following described real estate situated in Bingham County, Idaho Territory, and known and described as follows:
“Lot number seven in block number sixty as shown in the plan aor plat of the town of Eagle Rock.” (Copy of deed in author’s possession)
George Brunt, my great uncle, recalled Anderson’s trust when George sought to buy a defunct grocery business but had no collateral. Anderson said that he had known George as a pioneer boy and trusted him; Anderson instructed Minnie Hitt, his bank clerk, to make the loan. From this beginning George developed a successful Brunt Grocery, and later enterprises. (See Brunt family history, 103)
Robert Anderson was living in Idaho Falls in 1900, when the census reports he is 67, his wife Alice is 55, and they have been married 18 years. Others in the household were his aunt Jane Holt, single, 77; his brother John C. Anderson, 64, who had been married 33 years; and their black servant Ellis Van Winkle, 30 and single. All could read, write and speak English.
He returned to Missouri with intention of being back in Idaho to vote in the election of 1904. However he died as a result of a horse team accident on his farm in Aulville, Missouri, 17 July 1904. He was 71. An obituary by a friend published in St. Louis, Missouri and reprinted in the Idaho Register read:
“He was a pioneer in Idaho Territory, and in conjunction with his brother-in-law Mr. J. M. Taylor, established a trading post at what is now the important town of Idaho Falls, and built the first bridge over Snake river, the headwaters of the Columbia river. Mr. Anderson developed into a good business man, and what was more important to his success, he inspired everyone with whom he came in contact with perfect confidence in his integrity and personal honor, and this established for him a credit that stood him unfailingly in time of commercial disaster..... His success in business enabled him to render timely aid to almost every member of his family, and no brother was ever cherished with more sincere affection than was he... He married late in life, Mrs. Alice Garrard nee Jones..., who devoted more than twenty years of her life to his interest and happiness, and often lived in uncongenial surroundings at a distance from her friends and relatives to be with him. A recent visit to their beautiful home in Missouri enabled us to see and know the love and devotion she bestowed on him.”
Robert Anderson’s faith in Idaho Falls is shown in a letter which was published shortly after his death in 1904: The letter was to a potential settler, C. C. Campbell:
“In 1865, when the trading house which was the forerunner of Anderson Bros. Bank was established, the Snake River Valley was one unbroken waste of sage brush. There seemed to be almost no grass, and yet when a work ox was turned out by some train master, he soon became fat. The country looked desolate and worthless. Ben Holiday’s stage line went through to Montana and had a station where the stage mules were changed at intervals of ten or fifteen miles, where a stock tender spent or wore out the weary hours. Aside from them and a few trappers on the mountain streams, there were no white settlers.
“The Anderson Trading House bought furs from the Indians, sold goods to ox-train people on their way to and from Montana, bought gold dust which they weighed on the scales still used by the Bank; and shipped it to market, bought and sold greenbacks and did something in exchange. Greenbacks passed in the country generally at
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fifty cents on the dollar for gold dust, or about the same as they sold for in California in coin.
“In 1871 Prof. Hayden came along and told us we had a first-class soil and that if we ever got water on it, it would be very productive. The few who had by this time strayed in were giving their attention to stock raising. The range was found to be all that could be desired and stockmen did well. Then one or two began to try for a truck garden along Willow creek where their patch could get water during the spring rise. About 1878-9 the Anderson Bros. attempted to make a large canal to water a wide district of country. They put nearly $70,000 in what is now called the Anderson Canal. People soon began to take up and fence in land, crops were put in and yielded past the hopes of the new farmers. The truth is, Idaho Falls is situated in the midst of a favored region. A good range in the foothills near that can never be taken up for cultivation, better agricultural land than that selling in Illinois or Iowa for $1000 to $150 per acre, a good climate, a good cattle and sheep range. These Nature has given us, and now a progressive people are adding. School houses are all over the valley and are well patronized and the teachers well paid. Nine hundred pupils attend tthe school in Idaho Falls. The churches are well represented by eight or nine denominations and church buildings, some of them right handsome.
“Anderson Bros. Bank invites honest and industrious men to try their fortunes in the Snake River Valley. There are some men, even honest men, we don’t want to see–those who depend on luck, who look out for the new moon, those who will not walk under a ladder, or start any work on Friday. Let them stay at home, they are going to be disappointed anywhere. But for men who are able and willing to work there is no such word as fail in a country where wheat makes 50 bushels, oats 50 bushels, barley 60 bushels, rye 60, and potatoes 250a bushels to the acre, alfalfa from 5 to 8 tons, all root crops produce splendidly. We wrote, some years ago, that the Snake River Valley is the most favored locality in the great West, so vast a body of fertile land is nowhere else accompanied with a limitless amount of water. We predicted that it would produce more, acre for acre, than any place not an irrigated district. This Bank’s prediction has already come true....”
Photo captions:
(Both the above 2 photos were from Barzilla Clark, Bonneville County in the Making.)
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