Democratic Sentinel, Volume 22, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 15 January 1898 — A STRANGE FARM. [ARTICLE]

A STRANGE FARM.

It It Located 700 Fee* Belowthe Level of Idaho's Plains. On Snake River in Southern Idaho, twenty mites south of the little town of Shoshone and near the Great Shoshone falls, is located the strangest farm in the world. It is nothing but a hole in the ground, 700 feet below the surface, and embraces over GOO acres. But this “hole in the ground’’ has been transformed into a veritable paradise. For ages and ages this “Devil's corral,” as it was known by prospectors, had been standing silent ar» unknown. No one had the temerity to clamber down the steep cliffs that surround it until a few years ago when a venturesome spirit, thinking that gold might be found in the depths of the rock-walled basin, made the descent. He located a mine and began to work it, but his progress is mot worth recording. Burt Perrine, a young man from Indiana, seeking his fortune In the West, went to see the Great Shoshone falls and also took a view of this satanlc corral. The place Impressed him so favorably as a location for a ranch, truck farm or fruit farm that he bought the miner’s claim to the basin and became owner of it.

Perrine made a survey of the place and found that there were 420 acres that could be worked. In spite of the Jeers of his friends he began the task of transforming it into a productive area. This was no easy job. By a great deal of hard work he managed to blaze out along the rocky descent, a trail down which pack animals could travel. To do the work necessary down in the corral Perrine had to have wagons, scrapers, harrows, plows, powder and dynamite and these had to be lowered with ropes over a perpendicular lava wall about 700 feet In height. There were also other things that pack animals couldn’t carry and these had to be let down in the same manner. But the most difficult task of all was the building of a road up the 700 feet of miscellaneous precipice. The drover had some idea of surveying and with the assistance of - a great deal of dynamite and powder succeeded in constructing a winding roadway, that goes in and out, back and forth, between lofty cliffs in its descent. After infinite labor the bottom land was cleared and the soil has proved to be very productive. Among other things growing on the farm are 5,000 fruit trees. ' There are two beautiful lakes near by and these have been piped for Irrigating purposes. In winter the weather is much warmer than on the plains above.