~Gooding County News~

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Gooding County was created by the Idaho Legislature on January 28, 1913 by a partition of Lincoln County. In the 1880's it was part of Alturas County.

History note: Alturas County was a county in Idaho Territory and later the state of Idaho from 1864 to 1895. It covered an area larger than the states of Maryland, New Jersey, and Delaware combined. Most present-day southern Idaho counties were created at least in part from the original Alturas County area. The name Alturas comes from a Spanish word for "mountain summits" or "mountainous heights."

Alturas County was created by the Idaho Territorial Legislature in February 1864. Later that year the mining camp of Rocky Bar was designated the county seat. The county seat was moved to Hailey in 1882.

In 1889, the Idaho Territorial Legislature created Elmore County and Logan County from parts of Alturas County. On March 5, 1895, to circumvent a recent state Supreme Court decision striking down an earlier county reorganization, the Idaho Legislature combined Alturas and Logan Counties into a new county called Blaine. Two weeks later on March 18, the southern portion of the newly-created Blaine County was split off to form Lincoln County with its county seat at Shoshone. Hailey remained the county seat of what was now Blaine County and Alturas County disappeared from the Idaho map.

Mountain men and fur traders trapped the Malad River extensively in the early 1800s. Settlers came to the rich agricultural lands of the Hagerman Valley in the 1860s. The county seat is located in the City of Gooding. The county contains the cities of Bliss, Gooding, Hagerman and Wendell. The county has a population of over 14,461. Gooding County has been one of the fastest growing and prosperous counties in South Central Idaho. The economy is increasingly influenced by the dairy industry, and growth has been strong in the last decade. Gooding County also is one of the largest trout producing areas in the United States. The scenic Thousand Springs and the temperate weather of the City of Hagerman make tourism a significant industry with boat trips, fishing, and other water sports. In the north the Gooding City of Rocks, carved from Miocene rhyolite ignimbrites of the Twin Falls Volcanic Field, forms the south flank of the Mount Bennett Hills.

Gooding County: http://www.goodingcounty.org/

City of Gooding: http://www.goodingidaho.org/

Gooding Chamber: http://www.goodingchamber.org/

Hagerman Chamber: http://www.hagermanchamber.com/