----POWER COUNTY, Idaho It is argued that the best spud ground in the state of ''Famous Potatoes'' lies within the boundaries of this southeastern Idaho county.
The swath of land is located northwest of the county seat, American Falls, in a locality called Pleasant Valley. The roads between potato farms here are said to be paved in gold dust, not gravel.
Some people go so far as to say a golden arch, as in McDonald's fast food, shields the land, not from the constant wind out of the west, but from financial ruin.
Indeed, at one edge of Pleasant Valley, out where heat waves make the table-flat horizon wiggle with the wind and irrigation sprinklers cast rainbows against the setting sun, the mammoth Lamb-Weston potato processing plant turns out enough french fries to feed four servings each day to every man, woman and child in Idaho.
McDonald's, which has quality control people monitoring Lamb-Weston full time, buys all the fries and ships them by the truckload to be sold with Quarter Pounders throughout the Pacific Northwest. For farmers like Gary Gehring, America's appetite for french fries and other potato products has made him, by all outward appearances, a millionaire.
''I was 17 when I started in this business,'' said Gehring, a third-generation potato farmer. Now, at 42, Gehring harvests enough potatoes each year to fill six or more climate-controlled, drive-in storage cellars, each some 60 feet wide, 20 feet high and rivaling the length of a football field.
''I think there's probably a little gambler in all us potato farmers. But I think we're all looking more for stability,'' said Gehring, waxing philosophical over the fact that most of his crop was sold this year under previously-arranged contracts at around $5 per 100-pound sack.
If he had gambled and sold his spuds on the open market, Gehring's russets might have fetched a whopping $18 per sack. Just one of his storage cellars holds 75,000 sacks.
And just a few clicks of the calculator tell why potato farming in Power County is big business.
* Some 500 miles north in the wheat fields of Idaho's Latah County, potato cellars are about as scarce as hillside combines in Power County. While the two counties, designated ''sister counties'' for the state centennial celebration, are each rooted in agriculture, similarities drop off fast from there.
Latah County, with a population of more than 30,000, is a land of rolling farmland, gently invaded by forests from the east, where logging helps support the economy.
Power County, with some 7,000 residents, rests virtually flat between distant mountain ranges and sagebrush grows where there are no trees. A few diehard cattle ranchers, holding out amid the potato farms, cling to their Western lifestyle.
''The key to making a go of cattle ranching in Power County,'' quipped long-time cattleman Roger Whitnah, ''is having some spud ground to rent out.''
Farmers in Latah County shoot for 100 bushels of wheat per acre each year and talk hard times if they come up short.
They grow wheat in Power County, too, but would probably call it manna from heaven if someone harvested anything near 100 bushels. That's because wheat is grown mostly in rotation with the money crops of potatoes and sugar beets, to give the ground a rest between big paydays.
In some dryland farming areas of Power County, where potatoes and sugar beets can't be raised, less than 30 bushels of wheat per acre are harvested every other year.
''In Latah County, they wouldn't pull a combine for 30 bushels of wheat,'' said Stan Gortsema, agriculture extension agent for the University of Idaho stationed at American Falls.
Like in Latah County and the rest of America's farm belt, farms are bigger but fewer in Power County these days. Unlike other places, most of the farmland consolidation took place earlier here in the late '50s and early '60s, about the time deep wells began to be drilled and the arid ground was made Power County Like in Latah County and throughout the rest of America's farm belt, there are bigger, but fewer farms in Power County these days. Unlike other places, however, most of the farmland consolidation took place earlier here in the late '50s and early '60s, about the time deep wells began to be drilled and the arid ground was made ideal for potato and sugar beet farming.
Around potato farming in particular, the food processing industry,
especially at the Lamb-Weston plant, has grown today. For reasons of trade
secrets, company policy at Lamb-Weston prohibits the press, especially
photographers, inside the operation.
The relatively bullish potato and sugar beet industries aside, it has
been the federal Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) that has saved many
Power County farmers from disaster. Potatos are grown only where deep-well irrigation systems can be installed. The rest of the county is relegated to dryland farming. And for the past three years, drought has left unirrigated crops withering in the wind.
The desparity between irrigated potato ground compared to Power County
dryland farming ground is reflected in recent market prices. While dryland farmers are asking $200 an acre and not getting it, some ground in the Pleasant Valley potato area recently sold for more than $2,400 an acre, according to county officials.
Meanwhile, more than 106,000 acres of Power County dryland farm ground,
the maximum allowed under federal guidelines, has been planted to permanent grass under the CRP. Farmers are receiving $45 an acre per year to leave the land idle for a decade. That, most concede, is a lot more than they got by sowing a crop.
'''CRP was our salvation,'' said Gortsema.
American Falls, a city of some 3,700 people is quit literally Power
County's hub. It can be a bustling place, especially in the morning when farmers stop at the Melody Cafe to, as one city resident put it, '''turn rumor into fact.''
There are three banks in American Falls and the downtown area is all but full of shops and stores. Business, say merchants, could be better.
While there aren't as many farm equipment dealers these days, the ones
that do operate out of American Falls are said to be on the leading edge of potato producing technology.
Most of the jobs are predictably linked to agriculture or potato
processing and there's a healthy work force of Hispanic-speaking resident and migrant farm laborers.
Just one other incorporated town can be found in Power County, that being Rockland. It's is located about 15 miles south of American Falls and
boasts a population of a few hundred.
Arbon, an unincorporated hamlet with a two-room school house and about
20 students, lies in the southeastern part of the county, over the top of
the Deep Creek Mountains and just below that portion of the Fort Hall Indian Reservation that extends from neighboring Bingham and Bannock Counties.
In between the towns and farms, there is mostly flat, sagebrush country
with mountains beckoning like sirens in the distance. There's also American Falls Reservoir, created by a dam that backs up the Snake River for 37 miles.
The reservoir provides recreation, but was built in the 1920s to hold
irrigation water for downstream farmers outside Power County.
The county got its name because of the history of electric power
generation on the Snake River.
There are many people who move to Power County and wouldn't leave.
'''I like it here. It took a little getting used to, but you can't beat
this reservoir,'' said Liz Braich, who came to American Falls one year ago
with her huband, David, who works for Lamb-Weston.
Likewise, there are some people who can't stand the place.
'''It's the dirtiest county I've ever seen,'' said Eleanor Grant, who owns and runs the only cafe at Rockland and has been a resident for some 19 years '''As soon as I came here my skin dried up and so did my hair.''
Alvin Ralphs, the oldest Rockland resident at 81, blames destitude on
the '''grass program'' (CRP) and people seeking big dollars rather than
good, small town living.
'''It's pretty dead right now since the grass program went into effect.
The farmers aren't farming much anymore,'' he said. '''We've got enough
people around here, but they all drive out of here every morning to work.
Everybody wants big money and a handout.''
All tourists who come to Power County and stop long enough to talk are
told that American Falls had to be moved because the original town site is
now under water behind American Falls Dam.
During drawdown of the reservoir, especially in these drought years, the old town's building foundations, streets and sidewalks get exposed. The upper portion of a ghostly grain elevator rises out of the reservoir year round, marking the site of the early city.
A visitor might think American Falls, and for that matter, all of Power
County kind of yawns through each day. But that's probably because most
visitors to Power County don't really visit. They speed through on the
interstate going east or west to places of apparent more importance or interest.
If the truth be known, says Brett V. Crompton, editor of the weekly
Power County Press newspaper at American Falls, life amid the sagebrush,
potatos and sugar beats is pretty interesting, especially of late.
Crompton ought to know. In addition to working for the newspaper, he's on the American Falls City Council and, along with another council member, is the target of a recall election. (Crompton champions construction of a new city park, while a group of his constituents don't.) There's also a big debate over proposed construction of a medical waspe kincinerator within the city limits. The former mayor of American Falls, Merton Ferguson, favored construction in hope of bringing jobs and tax dollars to the city, but figures his stand had a lot to do with his defeat in the last election.
'''He beat the hell out of me,'' Ferguson said of his opponent, Wayne Egan.
As the new mayor of American Falls, Egan, a retired Lamb Weston employee, carries a card that touts his town as the '''Best City by a Dam Site'' and he vows to keep the medical incinerator away.
'''They're going to burn babies and fetuses,'' he said. '''And AIDS germs and other stuff will be floating through the air.''
Another debate that's drawn some national attention is being waged at
Rockland, a predominately Mormon community, where the American Civil Liberties Union filed suit against the local public school district for
allowing the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to operate a youth seminary on public school grounds. The church has since built a new seminary off the grounds, but the suit still pends in federal court.
There's also the story about Power County Sheriff Howard Sprague, who made headlines recently for his demonstration against the Idaho Department of Corrections' policy of housing an overflow of inmates in county jails.
'''I look at it this way. I think it's the State of Idaho's obligation to take care of that prisoner when he's sentenced,'' Sprague said.
To make his point, Sprague handcuffed a convicted child molestor to the state penitentiary fence at Boise and called the news media. '''I think every sheriff in the state of Idaho should go up there and lock them to the fence,'' said Sprague.
And before leaving Power County, don't forget that Idaho's High School
Teacher of the Year, Michael Hovey, teaches at American Falls High School.
All in all, Power County may appear too vast and uninhabited to have much beyond famous potatos. But like most places in Idaho, it has its surprises.
Historians argue that American Falls may be the first place in Idaho ever given a specific name on a U.S. map.
Explorers from the American Fur Co. reportedly plied the waters of the
Snake River by canoe and raft in 1811. According to old historical accounts, the party hit a '''foaming, brawling torrent'' were boats were
swamped and the adventurers barely made it to shore alive. The falls were,
predictably, named American Falls and future travelers were wise to portage around that portion of the rampaging river.
While much of southern Idaho maintains a history of Mormon influence,
Power County was originally settled by German Lutherans. An old cemetery
northwest of American Falls in the Pleasant Valley area is where many of
the original pioneers to the area are buried. (In contrast, another cemetery on the Fort Hall Indian Reservation east of American Falls rests within sight of the freeway. To those who pay close attention to the march of history, the relatives of Power County's true pioneers are buried there.)
To this day, there is a cross-section of churches in American Falls.
Likewise, the county leans neither Republican or Democratic, except in places like Rockland where conservative thinking and the Mormon faith dominate.
'''Some of my best friends aren't Mormon,'' says Rockland's Alvin Ralphs, a Mormom himself and proud of it.
Early settlement of Power County was hindered, say historians, by conflicts with Indians. One of Idaho's more popular tourist attractions, Massacre Rocks State Park, is located west of American Falls along Interstate 86 and reminds visitors of that day in August of 1862 when a caravan of 11 covered wagons was attacked by Indians.
Today, a portion of the Fort Hall Indian Reservation is located in Power County, but headquarters for the Shoshone-Bannock Tribe is located outside the county. Typically, most of the conflict in Power County between whites and Indians today centers around issues of Indian sovereignty. There is also an ongoing debate about non-Indians hunting, mostly for geese, on tribal land east of American Falls adjacent to the reservoir.
At the Power County Courthouse, located at the east end of a spaceous city park in the heart of American Falls, Douglas Glascock, the county treasurer and ex-officio tax collector, answered questions about his county's tax base by running off a copy of the 10 largest tax payers.
At the top of the list is the J.R. Simplot company, which has a fertilizer plant just outside of Pocatello, but just inside the Power County boundary. The FMC Corporation also has a phosphate plant in the same vacinity. The rub is that all the pollution from those plants goes east into Bannock County, while all the tax dollars come west into Power County.
Together, Simplot and FMC pour some $1.54 million in taxes each year into Power County.
Idaho Power Co. contributes another $806,000 to the Power County tax coffers, while Lamb-Weston kicks in another $374,500 annually.
Power County Commission Chairman Ralph (Moon) Wheeler, who got his nickname because '''my father sold moonshine during prohibition,'' looks at his county's tax base with sober understatement.
'''We're able to spend at a level where I think we are able to provide a lot of service,'' he said.
Back out on the flats of Pleasant Valley, Gary Gehring smiles in response to a question about what, beyond the profit made from potatos, is so pleasant about where he and his family live.
'''The old settlers called it Pleasant Valley, but I think they did it tongue in cheek. It can get a little ornery here,'' Gehring said.
True, the wind almost always blows, to the point where most trees planted around farm houses lean perpetually from west to east. And in the spring, before new crops turn the flat land green, the color brown dominates.
But there are also the seemingly endless rows of wheel line sprinklers
slowly distributing water over the fields, sure indicators that this year's crops are planted and another harvest is but a growing season away.
'''That's magnificent when you can see 2,000 sprinklers with one glance of the eye,'' said County Commissioner Wheeler.
Put another way, Power County is a place where rumors of Idaho's most ''Famous Potatoes'' just may be fact.
'''We try,'' smiled Gehring.
