Chesterfield opens for the season

It was a busy weekend, as Caribou County filled not only with Memorial Day visitors coming or going from parks to the north and west, and families visiting local cemeteries to make sure they were decorated, but it was also the start of the official summer season for the Historic Chesterfield Townsite.

As is the case every Memorial Day weekend, the townsite was opened up for a community lunch, dancing, an auction, and the official reporting for duty of summer tour guides.

DeVaughn Shipley has a fascinating story about his relatives, which he'll probably tell you if you track him down!

 Chesterfield is one of the oldest maintained pioneer towns in Idaho, and includes a number of ongoing building restorations, most of them undertaken by descendants of the original settlers of the area.

The homes, cabins, and buildings feature names familiar to the area such as Call and Holbrook, and many who share those names still make their homes in the area.

Other summer tour guides come from the ranks of those who simply love the history and the area.

Jill Furniss, for instance, is from the Blackfoot area.  Through the circuitous nature of the way these things sometimes work, she was on a cruise when she met someone who had a connection to the Chesterfield area.

Interested, she make her way down to see what it was like and ended up becoming a tour operator.  At this point, she is now well-versed in the names and structures that make up the historical site, a place she loves to spend her time.  She even found out she herself is a distant relation!  While she won’t be a fulltime guide this summer, she was happy to help out during the opening weekend.

“I just love it here – it’s such a wonderful place!” Furniss said. 

Jill Furniss knows a lot about Chesterfield after working tours for three years.

Chesterfield is popular spot to visit for those interested in Idaho history, pioneer history, and the founding of Idaho towns by Mormon settlers in the nineteenth century.  Due to its location, it isn’t exactly a place that people tend to randomly wander into, but that doesn’t mean they don’t.

One family from Logan who ended up touring the site this weekend ended up there as a result of the “brown sign” directing them to the location while on the way back from Wyoming. 

Another, waiting in line to purchase some of the huckleberry products for sale at the Museum/general store, had seen a Facebook post and decided to make their way over while visiting family in the area.

The townsite itself is open to visitors from Memorial Day to Labor Day, and is just a hop, skip, and a jump from nearby Bancroft.