Twin Falls: Canyon Country
Near Twin Falls, Idaho
Twin Falls sits on the rim of one of the most dramatic geological features in the American West: the Snake River Canyon, a basalt-walled chasm five hundred feet deep that splits southern Idaho in two. The city itself came into existence almost overnight, founded in nineteen oh four as part of a federal land reclamation scheme that turned a sagebrush desert into one of the most productive agricultural valleys in the nation. Today about fifty-two thousand people live here, served by one of the more unusual downtowns in Idaho, a mix of century-old commercial blocks, a thriving refugee and immigrant community, and a canyon rim that serves simultaneously as a public park, a BASE jumping platform, and a viewpoint over the falls that Nineteenth-Century visitors compared to Niagara. The Snake River, the falls, the canyon, and the engineering that made the valley bloom are all within a few miles of where you are standing.
