In addition to her public school system, of which Supt. W. R. Siders is the head, Pocatello is the seat of the Academy of Idaho, a state institution created by the legislature of 1901, and opened for instruction in 1902. The city gave ten acres as a site for the Academy, and in 1905 the state gave the institution forty thousand acres of land, the sale of which will provide an endowment. The work of the Academy is largely along technical lines, and for the use of the agricultural department a hundred-acre farm has been purchased just south of the city. Miles F. Reed is president of the Academy, which has about three hundred students.
Standing sentinel over the city, towering above it to the south, and doubtless protecting it from many a wind and storm, is Kinport’s peak. Harry Kinport, for whom this mountain was named, is now dead, but he was well known in Pocatello a few years ago, and is supposed to have been the first white man to climb the mountain. He signalized his feat by planting a flag there. Kinport was a business man in Pocatello for several years, coming to the town in 1885. He was always a great hunter and fisherman, and when President Roosevelt visited the city, caught a mess of trout and presented them to the visitor.
There is every reason to hope that Pocatello will have a population of over 20,000 before the next census. Its facilities as a distributing point are attracting many manufacturing and merchandise companies, who are building warehouses, and the fact that the Oregon Short Line railroad has built a freight depot to handle the traffic of a town of 50,000 population, shows that the management of that line expects a big growth.
CHAPTER XII.
CONCLUSION.
There are twenty-three counties in the state of Idaho, of which sixteen have a smaller and six a larger population than Bannock, while twelve counties have a smaller area and ten a larger. Therefore, Bannock is one of the larger counties of the state. This position she has creditably maintained in both the number and the quality of her public men, of whom several were mentioned in the last chapter.
Others who deserve mention here are former State Senators Ruel Rounds, George C. Parkinson, Louis S. Keller, John B. Thatcher, George H. Fisher and W. H. Mendenhall, our present senator, and former State Representatives William A. Walker, Robert V. Cozier, L. R. Thomas, William McGee Harris, Denmark Jensen, W. H. Lovesy, Edward L. Holzheimer, Thomas M. Edwards, John Schutt, C. W. Dempster, W. H. Mendenhall and C. W. Gray, D. J. Lau and D. J. Elrod, the county’s present representatives.
Many of these men have been returned to office several times, J. Frank Hunt, of Downey, having represented the county either as senator or representative continuously since 1900, with the exception of one term of office. In 1900, Thomas Terrell was elected lieutenant governor of the state, and in 1908, James H. Brady, of Pocatello, present United States senator for Idaho, was returned as governor.
Senator Brady was born in Indiana county, Pennsylvania, June 12, 1862, but was taken to Kansas by his parents in early boyhood, where he was educated in the State Normal College. He taught school for three years, fitted himself for the profession of law, edited a semi-weekly newspaper for two years, and then became interested in the real estate business. In time he was operating successful offices in St. Louis, Chicago and Houston, Texas. The irrigation and power possibilities of Idaho attracted him to this state in 1895, when he became identified with the development of the Snake river valley, the Idaho, Marysville and Fort Hall canals being among the projects in which he was active. He has been a leading factor in the electrical development of southeastern Idaho, the Idaho Consolidated Power company, at American Falls, being one of his useful and successful enterprises.
Although a man with large private interests that demanded much time and attention, Senator Brady has been an active and ruling figure in the Republican party in Idaho for several years. In 1900 he was a delegate to the Republican national convention and in 1908 he was a member of the committee sent by the convention to notify William H. Taft of his nomination for the presidency of the United States. He was vice-president of the National Irrigation Congress in 1896 and 1898, and a member of its executive committee from 1900 until 1904. The senator has always represented his constituents efficiently and well and in return enjoys their personal goodwill and loyalty.