Welcome to the Canyon County, Idaho GenWeb Project!
Canyon County Historical Background
Canyon County was created from Ada County on March 7, 1891 with the county seat at Caldwell.
"Canyon County was named for the small canyon through which the Boise River flows near Caldwell. What is now Canyon County played an important part in the early history of Idaho. Efforts to establish post at the mouth of the Boise River in 1812-13 and in 1819 were not successful. The Hudson Bay Company established Fort Boise in 1834 near what is now Parma and it was abandoned in 1855. Emigrants traveled through Canyon County on the Oregon Trail, and in 1854, twenty-one persons were killed in the Ward Massacre south of Meridian. The early settlers located farms along the Boise and Snake Rivers, and population quickly expanded when the Oregon Shortline crossed the county in 1883. Caldwell was platted in 1883 and incorporated in 1889. Nampa was incorporated in 1890 and the College of Idaho was founded at Caldwell in 1891. Agriculture is the chief industry of the county made possible by a vast acreage of irrigated land, and it has numerous small manufacturing and processing plants." -- Idaho Almanac, 1977 Edition, State of Idaho.
"County seat is Caldwell. Created from a portion of Ada County by an act of the State Legislature 7 March 1891. Located in SW Idaho, with the Snake River as its western and southern boundary. The Boise River furnishes irrigation water throughout the central and southern portions. Owyhee County lies to the South; Ada County to the East; Payette and Gem counties to the North; Oregon to the West. Current sources attribute the name to the canyon o f the Boise River near Caldwell. However, both John Rees and Vardis Fisher believed it was named for the Snake River Canyon, which forms a natural boundary for the county." -- Idaho Place Names, A Geographical Dictionary by Lalia Boone, 1988.
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Cities and Towns in Canyon County :: ISU atlas map :: 1895 Rand McNally map (includes parts of Gem & Payette Cos.)
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The Canyon County, Idaho GenWeb Project is part of the USGenWeb Project! We are a group of volunteers working together to provide free genealogy websites for genealogical research in every county and every state of the United States. This Project is non-commercial and fully committed to free genealogy access for everyone.
If you have any Canyon County related data, photos or web sites that you would like to have added to this site, please contact me. If you have access to records for the Canyon County area and can perform lookups by request, we need you! Contact Rebecca Maloney, Canyon County Coordinator. I would like to thank Sharon McConnel, Virginia Vaught and all previous coordinators for the work they did on this site.
This site was updated 13 April 2021.
What's New?
Assistant State Coordinator: Norma Hass
County Coordinator: Rebecca Maloney
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© Canyon County Coordinator, Canyon County IDGenWeb Project | All Rights Reserved.