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Idaho Falls: Noir et Blanc, Idaho Falls, ID (2026)

05/27/2026

Chances are, you’ve driven past this a thousand times, maybe more. Most likely, you’ve driven past on the Yellowstone Highway, the railroad tracks separating you from Eastern Avenue, here in a part of town you might never have reason to visit, unless you happen to work at Meadow Gold, or you live right here.

I don’t recommend always just driving by, in a hurry to be somewhere else. At least once, find places like this in Idaho Falls and turn off the car. Get out, stand quietly, and listen. Because there are voices here, but they’re tired and old, and they’re easily overwhelmed by the crush of our fast-paced world.

Listen and you’ll hear the noises – no, echoes of the noises – of the men and women, the trains and horses, the native people and pioneers, the preachers and missionaries and trappers and gold miners and farmers, all here for one purpose: to find their lives. To build from nothing into something. A beginning.

Some were successful and put down roots here. Others didn’t find what they were looking for and moved on. But all of them came looking for the very thing we all want: a place to work, a place to live, a place to call our own, maybe share it with a family, maybe with friends, but OUR place.

Eastern Avenue is old, and it sits on the edge of industrial Idaho Falls and the neighborhood springing up behind it, served by Ridge and Water and Placer, Pine, Oak and Walnut. Eastern Avenue was not where the well-healed would have lived. It’s where the working man would have found a room to put his few belongings while he helped to build downtown, lay tracks, tend the coal-fired boilers, or dig canals. The hands that turned the doorknobs at night along Eastern Avenue were calloused and dirty.

They didn’t leave their names inscribed on the buildings they built. They were probably never elected to office or remembered in the names of parks or memorials. But they built this town. They are the stones – the countless, nameless stones – that form the foundation of everything within a square mile of the falls. And if you stop long enough on the quiet corner of Eastern and Pine on a Sunday morning and pause…you can hear their voices.

Listen to them…

05/26/2026

This house on Eastern Avenue has been on my “hit list” for some time, and I always kind of assumed it was probably the oldest home in Idaho Falls. It’s a contender, but it is not the oldest. Built in 1900, there are a couple of homes that are at least a few years older, but there are not very many.

Truth is, I can’t find out much more about this one, and if anyone has any information or insider knowledge, I’d love to hear about it. It was built very close to the old Oregon Short Line Train Station and is listed in the Ridge Avenue District of the National Register of Historic Places as a “boarding house.” As near as Google and I can tell, it was PROBABLY built as a boarding house from the very beginning, trying to capitalize on the workers at the train station. However, it may have started as a single residence that was later carved up into boarding units. Do any of YOU know?

Part of the reason it has survived is the construction material that was used is textured cement block, which was unusual for the day. Wooden homes were (as they are today) more common, but also more subject to the ravages of time, fire, insects, mold, rot, and children with too much time on their hands.

The neighborhood on Eastern Avenue has lost its curb appeal, given the Thrift Store adjacent on the north, and the paint and glass store across the street to the south. Eastern Avenue is largely commercial these days, but this old house still stands resolute with the charm with which it was built at the very turn of the 20th century. I know by the standards of Europe and Asia, buildings that are 126 years old hardly get anyone’s attention. But around here? Those are the elders of the community that command MY respect…

05/25/2026

I couldn’t tell you how well robots guided by artificial intelligence could make candy. Maybe they could do it just fine. And I couldn’t care less, because there’s something machines will never imbue in whatever it is they make: soul.

Farr’s Candy and Ice Cream began as a little ice cream and confectioner’s shop on a corner (I can’t figure out which one) along Broadway in 1911. Roy Farr built it with marble counters and red barstools – and I’ll bet it had a black-and-white tile floor…just a hunch – to serve up ice cream to the people who didn’t have freezers in their home for keeping their own ice cream frozen. In other words, “all the people in Idaho Falls,” as freezers as a home appliance weren’t a thing until the 1940’s.

When Roy Farr died in 1943, his widow inherited the business, but wasn’t really in a position to run it. Their daughter, Claribel Farr Call, was the one child of theirs who expressed an interest, but her husband had just graduated from dentistry school and was off fixing soldier’s teeth in WWII. When he returned, he set his dentists’ tools aside and took up the business of sugar, and evidently it has become a family joke that he left dentistry, but remained the best friend of dentists. (Because cavities, for anyone not fully paying attention.) Claribel herself undertook some of the marketing and is personally responsible for the funny little sheriff’s characters for which Farr’s is famously known. They still have that nostalgic look of a 1950’s era marketing campaign, and I love them for that…why fix what isn’t broken?

All these years later, the Calls (the married name of Claribel Farr) could have done things to modernize their candy-making operation. They could have, but they chose “heart and soul” over cold efficiency. And I respect that. Their candies are cooked in copper kettles and kneaded out on genuine stone counters. Their chocolates are hand-dipped. Their huckleberries are locally sourced from people who pick them by hand (which admittedly is the ONLY way to pick wild huckleberries…)

Oh, and if you’ve ever stopped for a square ice cream cone in Swan Valley? Farr’s ice cream, probably delivered just the day before.

05/24/2026

I’m going to have to rely heavily on you all to fill in the stories for Holy Rosary Church. Members of the congregation have written a detailed historical account (“Blackrobes Journey: 1840-1990”) of the parish and its place in the greater Catholic Diocese of Boise to honor the centennial of Holy Rosary. However, my own knowledge of the building and its place in the Catholic community of Idaho Falls is pretty limited. There are a few nuggets that I discovered, and one important detail that warrants a “two-fer” with this post…two photo places for the price of one.

The church we all know as Holy Rosary was built in 1948 and designed by the same firm that designed the Idaho Capitol. The 1-ton marble and onyx alter and crucifix (made with stone from Italy, France and Portugal) was the gift of the James H. Brady estate, who was the 8th Governor of the State of Idaho. And of particular interest to me is the fact that the south-side stained glass windows were designed by local artist, philanthropist of the arts, and personal friend of my mother, Suzanne Fonnesbeck, who had them made in Austria and then returned and installed here.

What I did NOT know, though if I’ve learned anything about the people who follow this project, many of you probably DO already know, is that the original Holy Rosary church was built in 1891 on the corner of Eastern Avenue and Maple Street…and is still there! That makes it rather unique, as most of the early wooden church structures that were later replaced by the versions we all know today have been lost to fire or been otherwise demolished. But not Holy Rosary. It lived on as the R&R Bar and Sacred Fire Games (a nod to the fact that there was still an old church window in the store) for many years, until only recently. Even Google still thinks the R&R is open, but I was suspicious, so I took my Research and Customer Service Departments (both worthless mini schnauzers) downtown this morning for the express purpose of finding out for myself. And the building is, in fact, vacant and for lease. It’s the second photo in today’s post.

And now I’m looking for a wealthy benefactor to open the Noir et Blanc Gallery in that space…how cool would THAT be?

05/23/2026

[NOTE: I got scooped by the Post Register...I took these photos and wrote this up on Thursday, all tee'd up for this morning, and then the PR ran a piece on the season opening of the Motor-Vu yesterday, and now I look like I copied them, dadgummit!!!]

[Yeah, I said "dadgummit"...]

Drive-in theaters were big business in the 1950s and ‘60s, with over 4,000 operating around the country. I remember piling into our big, blue Ford station wagon with a thermos of Kool-Aid and a paper grocery bag soaked in butter and full of popcorn that mom popped at home for the movie, and though I can’t remember what films we watched, I can picture like it was yesterday the back of the car with blankets and pillows laid out for us to lounge on while the box speaker squawked where it hung at the top of Dad’s window.

There are vastly fewer drive-in’s today, perhaps a few more than 300. Some states have exactly zero left, while Idaho still sports six. We used to have at least two more in east Idaho, but the Sky Vu shut down in 2015, and the Spud in Driggs blew down in a windstorm and has yet to be replaced…if it ever will be.

But this one? On the North Yellowstone Highway? Not only was it the first one that I personally drove a car to (with several friends hiding under blankets in the back of my parent’s much newer, but equally giant green Ford station wagon), but it’s also perhaps more special than your average Drive-in.

Because it isn’t average at all.

It is literally the largest outdoor screen of any drive-in theater in the Unites States, and is the oldest remaining drive-in in Idaho, built in 1947 along with a few others of that same age, most of which are long gone. But it almost didn’t survive. It was shut down in 2008 when it as too costly for the owners to transition from 35mm film to digital, and sat deteriorating for a decade.

And then Ryan and Linda Rumsey, who shared some of their earliest dates at the Motor Vu in the ‘70s, decided they couldn’t bear to see it torn down and made its restoration literally a labor of love. They bought it in 2019, cleared the overgrown vegetation, transitioned the system to digital, and then launched by helping the local high schools host their COVID-era “socially distant” graduations at the newly revitalized drive-in where everyone could see the celebration on the giant screen from the compliant safety of their cars.

And tonight you can catch a double feature: “The Mandolorian and Grogu,” followed by “The Devil Wears Prada 2.” I’ll be sad if no one sneaks through in the back of an old station wagon…

05/22/2026

You’re going to have to fight me if you think differently (we fight gently around here, so it's okay!) but I’m pretty certain that El Ranchito was the very first actual Mexican Restaurant in Idaho Falls. I couldn’t find its exact opening timeframe, but roughly 1972(ish). Mi Casa (now Plum Loco) was opened in the mid- 1970’s. I remember going to both as a kid, but I remember El Ranchito first, and later trying “the new place on Cliff Street” with the monster chimichangas. Anyone know differently?

Mexican food in the 1970s for a very large swath of America consisted of the ground-beef-stuffed-in-a-crispy-taco-shell variety that was more likely to be topped with ketchup than salsa, as most of us had never heard of salsa. Today salsa rivals ketchup and sits only behind mayonnaise for the top selling condiment in the U.S., but when I was kid…it didn’t exist. Not to me, anyway. Anyway, we didn’t know much about Mexican food, and it wouldn’t surprise me at all if my 11-year-old self didn’t order a hamburger at El Ranchito, something that I would consider blasphemy today.

What I remember like it was yesterday, however, was their sopapilla’s. I’m salivating as I think of them now, but they were little hollow triangular pillows of fried heaven that relied on a huge air bubble inside that you cut into and filled with honey. Nothing else on that early menu of my youth stands out, but I LOVED the little treat that came with the bill at the end of every meal.

El Ranchito didn’t last for very many years, and I couldn’t tell you why. Maybe the location was bad, although placed across from the Motor Vu and adjacent to Sunset Sports (used to be in the building occupied today by Standard Plumbing and Heating and visible here) couldn’t have been too bad. Still, after Mi Casa opened, El Ranchito disappeared, though for some reason, the building still remains, even if unoccupied and serving only as a reminder of my childhood...

Oh...and these days? 80 is the number of restaurants and food trucks selling food from south of the border around here. EIGHTY!!

05/22/2026

We interrupt your regularly scheduled program to announce that the critically acclaimed (by my mother) "Idaho Falls: Noir et Blanc" is back in stock at your independent bookstore in Idaho Falls, Winnie & Mo's Bookshop. Your dad wants one for Father's Day, and I've already signed them.

Well, MY children's dad doesn't want one. He's actually trying to unload them. But everyone ELSE'S dad definitely wants one.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

[Father's Day is June 21...]

05/21/2026

It’s easy to drive right past Garcia’s Meat Market Y Cocina. The Northgate Mile is wide, and businesses ranging from dress rentals to tattoo parlors clutter both sides of the street. But Garcia’s sits right in the middle of it all, and is one of those “If you know, you know” places.

I know.

But I had to discover it. And if you believe in the notion that you can gauge the authenticity of the Mexican cocina (or “kitchen,” and it sits in the back of the market) by the number of Mexican people eating there, then you’ll want to discover it, too, if you haven’t already.

I was scheduled to meet a friend for lunch at Garcia’s yesterday, and for days vacillated between asking for permission to add them to this project or just showing up for lunch without my camera. Because I know that when I step into a Mexican market, I’m stepping out of my familiar and into someone else’s, and I don’t want anyone to feel uncomfortable.

In the end, I got brave and introduced myself to Brenda, the daughter-in-law of Maria Garcia who was on cash register duty. She could not have been more gracious. I handed her my card, showed her my Instagram page, and she welcomed me in.

I can’t tell you much about Maria Garcia, beyond my understanding that she has lived here since she was a teenager, about 30 years. She and her late husband started their business in a truck years ago, and expanded to a little storefront on West Elva by the ballfield when they could. When they outgrew that spot, they moved roughly 13 years ago to their current spot on the Northgate Mile, where Maria runs it today with her son.

I can’t speak to the meats and salsas in the counter, though Brenda encouraged me to try and I assured her that I don’t cook well enough to do the carne asada justice. Also, there is something almost immoral about converting a Mexican market to black and white (noir et blanc), because they are among the most colorful places you can explore. But I did, because that’s what I do, and I’m so glad I asked.

Oh…and Brenda bought my lunch, despite my protestations.

“It’s just the kind thing to do,” she said. I trust she knows that her kindness begets more kindness. I believe in that…

05/20/2026

The west has an interesting historical relationship with women, and though I don’t pretend to know a great deal about it, I have a theory: the women who made the journey to settle the west endured all the same things the men did to get here, except they did it in a dress. They were a tough brand of American and immigrant women who were willing to move to a dry, sagebrush-laden landscape and try to make a life where their husbands tried to make a living. And not all of them came with husbands, which for the day, made them even that much more extraordinary. Therefore it’s of no surprise to me that the first states to grant women the right to vote on equal footing with men were, first Wyoming (when it was still a territory), followed by Utah and Colorado, and then…Idaho, in 1896, just six or so years after becoming a state at all.

I’ve mentioned the Village Improvement Society, whose leadership included the likes of Kate Curley, Rebecca Mitchell, “Minnie” Hitt, and Elizabeth Wheeler, to whom Idaho Falls owes for some of its refining features such as sidewalks framed by trees, street names, addresses on homes, cemeteries, parks, and of course the public library.

But do you know of Jennie Underwood?

And do you know what a truly rare accomplishment it was for a woman in 1918 to have the chutzpah and means to undertake a commercial enterprise on her own?

Jennie Underwood built and ran the Underwood Hotel on C Street, proximate to other hotel properties like the Bonneville and Hotel Idaho, all built where they were to attract business from the train station just down the street. The two-story hotel built in an important financial district of the growing city was no mean feat, and to be able to achieve this suggests she was an entrepreneur of considerable talent, and yet…

…we know almost nothing about her. So, here’s my question, and I’m genuinely curious. Was she allowed to be lost to history BECAUSE she was a woman? I know the answer is, "not necessarily", but I can’t help but wonder…

Still, her building lives on where others failed, though we know it today as the Ross Hotel, one of the few remaining buildings of the earliest days of Idaho Falls.

05/19/2026

I spent five of my formative years (ages 6-11) living in East Brunswick, New Jersey. And though the area we lived in wasn’t “the city”, we were surrounded by them, including close enough to commute to Newark and New York City. Sometimes in the summer my mom volunteered to assist with Vacation Bible School at Aldersgate Methodist Church, in part because they were located in our immediate neighborhood (one house stood between us and the church), and in part because my mom grew up in a culture of moms volunteering in schools, churches and hospitals, and as an artist and “crafty” person, she knew her skills would be useful.

The kids were mostly from black families in the inner-city projects of New Brunswick, and when they came to Aldersgate, the oak and maple trees of the woods behind us were the biggest and most abundant most of them had ever seen. The few acres of woods that I rode my bike through and built forts in with my friends was like a forest primeval to the city kids, and they were intrigued, but not willing to venture in.

What many of them had NEVER seen, were farm animals. Cows and horses, sheep and pigs…these were creatures of television and story books, but not their real lives. They were unlikely to ever see one, and would never in their lives touch one.

Part of what I love about Idaho Falls – something many of us can take for granted – is that for as long as I’ve lived here, it straddles the fence between city and country. Small enough to feel rural, surrounded as we are on all sides by farm and pasture, yet large enough to have real theater, good jobs in healthcare, energy, hospitality, and…whatever economic sector Melaleuca falls under (I feel like I should have a better answer than that), and a variety of places to eat. Big enough for a Costco, but small enough that I see cows and horses almost every day.

My kids never lived in a big city growing up, and have only known a world in which horses in the neighborhood made sense. They grew up straddling the fence, one foot in both worlds, but not standing firmly in either one. They never drove a tractor, and they never rode the subway to school. But growing up here, they understood the meaning of both.

And I’m grateful for that.

(In fairness, my kids had to get out of Idaho Falls to "touch" their first subway, as they are nearly as exotic to us as horses are to a kid from New Brunswick...)

(Subway as in "train", not as in "sandwich"...in case that wasn't obvious...) 😉😂

05/18/2026

Allan Herschell knew how to make a country fair carousel. With horses hand-carved out of wood (often with cast aluminum heads, legs and tails), their running motion frozen in time with meticulous skill, Herschell’s North Tonawanda, NY, company would go on to produce over 3,000 of these classic wooden carousels.

The problem with wooden horses, however, is they are hard to keep in good working condition. Subjected to buffetings by weather, fire, dry rot and neglect, in time, most of those original wooden carousels were lost to the ravages of the elements and failure to attend to their maintenance needs. Only 71 remain scattered around the U.S. and Canada.

In 1947, Allan Herschell built two “twin” carousels. Identical in nearly every regard, their journeys would take wildly divergent paths, though both would survive. One was sent to the far west, landing in the new little amusement park named “Funland” developed in the small city along the Snake River called Idaho Falls. Though built to be portable per the needs of a traveling carnival, the Idaho Falls carousel is today considered incredibly rare, because not only has it survived, but it is the only one left in the entire western U.S. that still sits today where it was delivered in 1947. Recently refurbished as part of a large restoration of all of Funland, Allan Herschell would be pleased to know that Idaho Falls has taken good care of its antique carousel.

Its twin, however, was delivered to Gwynn Oak Amusement Park in Baltimore, and was ground zero for pivotal civil rights protests. In 1963, the carousel was famously desegregated…something that is difficult for us to imagine in this day and age. Hurricane Agnes would undo what the Civil Rights Movement had fought for, shuttering the amusement park in 1972, and the carousel was placed in storage, making moot the fact that black children could ride next to white children.

But that was not the end of Funland’s twin carousel. In 1981, the Smithsonian Institute purchased the mothballed Allan Herschell to replace its weather worn 1922 carousel, and today, the little carnival ride that is virtually identical to the one at Funland is found on the grounds of the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

And now you know…the rest of the story.

Idaho Falls: Noir et Blanc

05/27/2026

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