Linda Helms

Jerome 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. Perrine's 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 Streets--the 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.