Linda Helms

Jerome (Images of America) Linda Helms

On June 30, 1907, Robert McCollum, Jerome Kuhn, and two other men rode in a horse-drawn wagon up the Blue Lakes Grade from Ira B. Perrines Snake River Canyon ranch. Looking for the ideal spot to form a new town, they traveled 10 miles northwest through the sagebrush desert of Southern Idaho. By nightfall, they stopped to camp. The next morning, they awoke to a beautiful mountain vista and decided they had found the perfect spot for a town. Their campsite became the crossroads of West to East Main Streets and North to South Lincoln Streetsthe exact center of Jerome, Idaho. From that humble beginning, Jerome has grown to 10,000 people with many sustained businesses and enterprises begun by new pioneers.