Iconic Idaho Falls citizen who served as a lawman for over 20 years grew up in the city’s Wild West infancy
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Editor’s note: This is the second in a series about Fred and Frank Keefer. Read the first story here.
IDAHO FALLS – The guns in Bruce Lines’ safe bring back warm memories of his great uncle.
The 74-year-old Idaho Falls man is the nephew of Fred and Frank Keefer, twin brothers for whom Keefer’s Island near John’s Hole Bridge in Idaho Falls is named. Fred built a cabin on the island in 1939 that’s still standing and served as a deputy for the Bonneville County Sheriff’s Office for 21 years.
Lines still has several guns Fred used during his days as a lawman. One of them is a Colt Buntline Special, a long-barreled variant of the Colt Single Action Army revolver. Though most of the gun is still intact, the trigger guard is completely gone.
Lines also has a sawed off shotgun his great uncle once used, but in place of the handle is part of an antler from an elk or deer. Lines also has a Colt 45 with three notches on the handle, a gun Fred took from someone he once arrested.
These and a now pewterized cowboy hat worn by Fred, are just a few of the items in Lines’ possession. After Fred’s death in 1987, Lines says a realtor sold many of Fred’s belongings and whatever the family didn’t claim, the museum acquired. None of it is currently on display, but Chloe Doucette, the Museum of Idaho’s managing director, says they’re hoping to open an exhibit in the next few years.
Remembered as a soft-spoken, intelligent man, Lines tells EastIdahoNews.com Fred lived his life with one foot tied to the old west. He and his brother were born in 1891 when Idaho Falls was a burgeoning community on the western frontier. They preferred living off the land and they owned lots of it, including the property where Pinecrest Golf Course and Freeman Park now sit. (Keefer Street between Higbee Avenue and North Holmes near Pinecrest is named in their honor).
“Frank (who was a taxidermist) and Fred lived in very modern homes, and yet Frank used his bathtub to soak his hides in. He never took a bath and Fred just stored stuff in his bathtub. They had modern things but they didn’t use them in the way they were intended,” Bruce’s wife, Jill, says.
When and how they bathed is “the question of the hour,” Jill says.
Getting started in law enforcement
Fred was first elected Bonneville County sheriff in 1918, a position he held for about a year, according to the sheriff’s office. He became a deputy years later in 1938. Over the course of two decades, he served under five sheriffs and was acting sheriff for about a week while a replacement was found.
The Lines don’t know for sure what motivated Fred to become a deputy, but say this quality of holding on to the Old West may have had something to do with it.
He also had an interest in the military. Frank was a veteran of World War I and war was a subject Fred was interested in, particularly the Battle of the Little Bighorn.
“Fred was very handy with weapons,” Bruce says. “He had 40 or 50 guns hanging from the ceiling. Those were the decorations in his house.”
Aside from that, Bruce says Fred was well-known and even-tempered, which could have played a role as well.
Though Fred and Frank were known for their wild stories, many of which have been passed down over the years, Bruce’s knowledge of Fred’s years as a lawman is sparse.
But he does recall Fred serving as a jailer for the bulk of those years. Drunkenness was a common thing he arrested people for in those days and many of those who came through liked him because of how he treated them.
“I visited him at the jail sometimes and I could tell you what the jail looked like but not any specific stories, other than what’s in his book,” says Bruce.
The Keefer brothers’ knack for storytelling prompted both of them to write memoirs late in life. In his book, Fred recalls some childhood experiences that may have influenced his decision to go into law enforcement.
Growing up in the wild west
Fred recounts an instance in his boyhood when a saloon keeper shot and killed two cowboys for repeatedly shooting out the lights in his business.
“The law enforcement officers, which were few, were not only tough, but sometimes cruel,” Fred writes.
A man from Montana who was wanted on a “minor charge” hid out in a straw stack in Idaho Falls with his partner. Fred says an officer shot one of them, put his head in a gunny sack and placed it in a downtown bar.
On another occasion, an officer reportedly shot a 16-year-old boy who had “run away from a freight outfit.” He was an orphan and the company had snagged him to do chores, but treated him badly. He hid in a barn and an officer shot him.
Years later, Fred and his dad were in a saloon. Around 9:30 p.m., someone came in and yelled that the jail was on fire. They followed the sheriff to the jail and told him to hurry and open it so the man inside wouldn’t burn.
“He set it on fire,” the sheriff said, according to Fred.
They were able to get him out and the sheriff rolled him on the ground to put out the flames. Fred didn’t remember what happened to the victim.
In 1911, Fred and Frank were 20 years old and were part of a posse sent to catch Hugh Whitney, a man wanted for shooting a conductor and wounding another man. That fall, Fred “went to work in the Bonneville County Sheriff’s Office.”
‘In 20 years of service, I used a gun twice’
More than 30 pages of Fred’s memoir is devoted to his years as a deputy. Among all the cases he was involved in, he says he only used his gun twice in 21 years.
The first time happened during his first week in office. He and the sheriff (whom Fred doesn’t name but was most likely Sheriff Harry Meppen, Bonneville County’s longest-serving sheriff to date) went to a neighboring state to arrest a man on a felony charge. They picked up the 30-year-old man in a bar, who Fred says was “more than 200 pounds, half drunk and hard to handle.”
RELATED | How Bonneville County got its name and the early lawmen who protected its citizens
When they got him to the jail, he apparently refused to sign the extradition papers. They locked him up and both sheriffs later admitted they forgot to search him. A search revealed the man had nothing on him but he was now willing to sign the papers because the jail was freezing.
Fred went in the basement to wash up before they left, and the prisoner went with him because he claimed he wanted to wash up, too. That’s when the prisoner tried to escape.
“With two jumps, he landed on the bottom. How a man that size could move sure surprised me. I found him in the coal bin crawling through a coal shute. I yelled for him to stop but he kept on crawling,” writes Fred.
Fred placed his gun in the middle of his back and told him he’d shoot if he didn’t stop. He crawled back and Fred handcuffed him before bringing him upstairs and back to Idaho.
Fred actually fired his gun on the second occasion. He’d gone to bed at the jail while working the night shift. Around 1 a.m., he saw a man inside the barbed wire fence that surrounded the jail.
The man was running around so Fred put on his boots and his holster and yelled at him to stop. The man ignored his warning and Fred fired a shot above the man’s head. Fred reports the man jumped over the eight foot fence like it was nothing. He kept running and Fred fired a second shot, causing him to stop. Fred caught him on the west side of the courthouse.
“I then found out why he had ignored the gun shots — he was drunk,” Fred writes. “He was carrying a package of hack saw blades, which he was intending to put through the bars. I was severely reprimanded by the sheriff for this act.”
‘People are still talking about him’
Fred retired as a deputy in 1959, the same year he sold his cabin to the city for $1. He was 96 when he passed away on Dec. 5, 1987.
Fred wasn’t the only member of his family to serve his community. His sister, Louise Blackbird, was the first woman in eastern Idaho to pass the bar exam, according to Bruce. Fred’s brother, Clyde, who is Bruce’s grandfather, was the mayor of St. Anthony for 34 years. Clyde Keefer Memorial Park is named in his memory.
Bruce is proud of his heritage as a member of the Keefer family and the indelible mark Fred and his brother had on the city of Idaho Falls.
“He’s been gone for a long time and people are still talking about him,” says Bruce. “He was a man of integrity.”
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