Two brothers and a cabin on Keefer’s Island helped establish Idaho Falls as ‘a nice place’ to live ‘with a touch of wilderness’

IDAHO FALLS – Working on a cabin that belonged to two well-known brothers in Idaho Falls’ past is one of the highlights of Truman Atwood’s career.

The 80-year-old Rigby man retired in 2013 after working for 50 years as a carpenter. During a conversation with EastIdahoNews.com, he dropped a few names of noteworthy people who were his clients over the years. Among them is Erik Estrada, actor on the TV show “CHiPS,” who Atwood says owned a house in Swan Valley.

Others include Margaux Hemingway — late granddaughter of author Ernest Hemingway — who owned a house in Ketchum, and Wilson Rawls, who wrote “Where the Red Fern Grows” while living in Idaho Falls.

“I built a fence for him while he was writing that book,” Atwood says of Rawls. “He was on his back deck watching me build it and my brother said, ‘Boy, that’s a lazy damn guy. All he does is sit there with a pen in his hand. Why doesn’t he go and get a job?'”

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But the job Atwood recalls most fondly is the cabinet work he did for Fred and Frank Keefer, twin brothers who are the namesake for Keefer’s Island about a mile upstream from the Idaho Falls. Fred owned a cabin on the island that’s still standing today. It’s visible from the back of some of the restaurants on the west side of the Snake River along Lindsay Boulevard.

Atwood worked on the cabin and an old museum Frank built on 14th Street back in the 1960s. The building that housed the museum is now occupied by Kids Korner daycare and preschool, but the museum’s former contents are now at the Museum of Idaho. None of it is currently on display, but managing director Chloe Doucette says they’re hoping to open an exhibit in the next few years.

Atwood says the Keefer Brothers had two distinct personalities. As Idaho Falls became a burgeoning community, both men longed for the day when it was still a small town on the western frontier. Though Frank frequently wore a cowboy hat, his lifestyle resembled a frontiersman similar to Daniel Boone.

“I remember going in his old cabin and he had bear rugs from bears he’d skinned. He did a lot of skinning. He was a taxidermist and was in a carnival at one time as a snake charmer,” Atwood recalls.

Fred was a lawman for the Bonneville County Sheriff’s Office for 21 years, according to his written history. He served as a deputy sheriff, and was acting sheriff at one point. (Fred’s years in law enforcement will be covered in a separate story).

Doucette says the Keefer brothers were “wonderful storytellers,” and that’s one reason their history is so prominent and well-documented. She shares one such story from museum archives.

“Frank worked for Sportsman’s Island, which is the Japanese Garden now,” Doucette says. “One of his jobs was to grind up meat everyday to feed the fish. He would go down to the edge of the river and wash the grinder off. Wild fish started to (count on) a food source being there. Frank claims there was a fish that got so tame, it would roll on its belly and he’d pet it. He named it old Eli.”

‘They represent the transition from the old west to the new west.’

The Keefer’s story begins with their father, William Keefer, who came to Idaho Falls in the 1870s when it was known as Eagle Rock. He helped Matt Taylor build the original toll bridge across the Snake River and later the railroad bridge.

Bill, as he was known by friends and family members, was the oldest son and left the family home in Pleasant Hall, Pennsylvania in 1875 to seek his fortune out west.

A documentary about the Keefer Brothers says that Bill and his younger brother got a job with the Union Pacific Railroad in Omaha, Nebraska. Eagle Rock had quite the reputation and it drew them onward.

“Eagle Rock … was a pretty well-known spot because of the toll bridge built in the mid 1860s,” Doucette tells EastIdahoNews.com. “Because it was a growing city, there was a good possibility for William to make money here. He helped build the railroad bridge and the retaining wall for the hydropower plant. He was the lead on making the falls. It’s been redone since (then), but that’s why (the city is called) Idaho Falls (today).”

Bill and his wife, Eldora — whom he’d met years earlier in Pennsylvania — were married in Eagle Rock. They settled down sometime in the 1880s and had seven children. Fred and Frank, the couple’s third and fourth child, were born in 1891, the same year Eagle Rock became Idaho Falls.

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Doucette says Fred and Frank are the most well-known of the Keefer children because they represent the transition of Idaho Falls from the “old west to the new west.” And that’s how they lived their life.

Fred’s decision to build the cabin in 1939, which he lived in off and on for about 20 years, was one example of the brothers’ “cowboy personification of the west.”

“He wanted to be living off the land. There were rumors that a cougar and some wolves lived out there with him,” says Doucette. “He had a mining claim on that land and you’re not actually allowed to live on a mining claim. (Building the cabin) was a bit of a workaround.”

Both Frank and Fred had a full-time residence in town. Since Frank wasn’t at the cabin consistently, Doucette says it was often a source of curiosity for people and was frequently vandalized.

Over time, Fred grew tired of this. In 1959, he sold it to the city for $1, on condition the property retain the name Keefer’s Island.

Frank was 85 when he passed away in 1976. Fred died in 1987 at age 96. Both of them are buried in the Rose Hill Cemetery in Idaho Falls.

The Keefer legacy

The Keefer family’s community-mindedness and knack for storytelling prompted them to preserve the city’s history. The brothers played an integral role in the creation of the Bonneville Museum, which later became the Museum of Idaho.

Aside from the cabin and other structures the Keefer family built, Doucette says the mentality of having a taste of the old west in a city with all the modern amenities remains an important feature for people who call Idaho Falls home today.

“A lot of people who end up here … want to live in a nice place (that has) amenities with a touch of wilderness,” says Doucette. “Having the ability to use the river and the outside space we have around here is partially thanks to them.”

Keefer’s Island was once used as the site to launch the fireworks on the 4th of July. Though the cabin is visible from the west side of the Snake River, the museum is working with the city to provide boat rides to the island and start hosting tours of the cabin.

“This could be a really fun summer activity for people. It’s not solidified yet … but I’m crossing my fingers there will be something going on this summer,” says Doucette.