Franklin, ID

Franklin is a Franklin County city on Highway 91 just north of Utah, in the Cache Valley section of southeast Idaho. The 2020 census counted 1,025 residents. Mormon pioneers led by Thomas S. Smart founded the settlement on April 14, 1860, when residents believed the site lay in Utah Territory; a later survey put Franklin in Idaho. That border-country origin gives the town a strong sense of first-arrival history. The Lorenzo Hill Hatch House, John and Ann Doney House, Franklin Co-operative Mercantile building, and log Relic Hall line the local story, while the Idaho Pioneer Association keeps Idaho Day on the calendar each June.

ATTRStaplegunther ( talk )David Jolley / CC BY-SA 3.0

Franklin sits near the Bear River and the roads toward Preston, Cache Valley, and northern Utah. Irrigation ditches and farm fields begin almost as soon as the houses thin out. Franklin's local scoop is a small city where an old Mormon settlement, a state-border mix-up, sandstone houses, and a living Pioneer Byway all meet in one valley town.