Firth, ID

Firth sits on the eastern side of the Snake River, looking toward the Blackfoot Mountains from Idaho’s broad agricultural plain. The community began as a Swedish settlement in 1885. Lorenzo J. Firth gave land for a railroad section house and water tank, and when the railroad named its station for him in 1903, the name stuck. A post office followed in 1905. That sequence gives Firth a classic railroad-town beginning, with the water tank, station, and nearby farms shaping the first pattern of daily life.

ATTRDBarker1053 / CC BY-SA 4.0

The river and mountains keep the setting legible even as the town remains small. U.S. Route 91 passes through Firth, linking it with the larger communities of the Snake River corridor, while the cemetery—known as Dye Cemetery before 1935—holds an earlier chapter of local memory. Firth’s story is preserved in a centennial history covering 1905 through 2005, a reminder that the town’s character comes from generations of ordinary work: farming, tending businesses, maintaining streets, and looking after neighbors. The 2020 census counted 517 residents, a scale that still leaves the landscape close at hand.