Bonneville County and Eastern Idaho's Growth

Bonneville County was carved out of Bingham County in nineteen eleven. The county was named for Captain Benjamin Bonneville, the French-born Army officer who explored the Snake River country in the early eighteen thirties, and whose adventures were later written up by Washington Irving. Idaho Falls was named the county seat.

The creation of Bonneville County coincided with the first great irrigation boom, when federal Reclamation Service projects and private canal companies were converting the surrounding plain into farmland at a rapid pace. By the nineteen twenties, Idaho Falls had grown into the commercial hub of a substantial agricultural region.