Payette-Gem County ID Archives News.....Old Payette County--Nothing left of Falk, Idaho November 30, 1983
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Patty Theurer seymour784@yahoo.com November 20, 2005, 1:54 am

Independent Enterprise 1983 November 30, 1983
Independent Enterprise
Payette, Idaho
Wednesday, November 30, 1983

Old Payette County
Nothing left of Falk, Idaho
By Dan Gallagher

FALK, Idaho-Towns have a funny way of growing, and of disappearing.  The Falk’s 
Store, located five miles east of Hamilton Corners near the Payette River, was 
a stagecoach stop that became a fortified town.  It is now a barely discernible 
bit of gravel in a field. 

Arthur Hart of the Idaho Historical Society called the Falk Store a “regional 
shopping center of its day.”  In 1864, James Toombs opened a store about a mile-
and-a-half from the Falk settlement. Years later, Nathan Falk built a rival 
business and employee Ed Shainwald watched over the business.  

The store was on the Placerville-Umatilla stage route (the only store between 
Boise and Baker City,) and its “roadhouse” location meant a lot of business for 
Falk.  In the 1870’s, it was said that Falk did $60,000 of business yearly, 
which is very good for the day.  

In 1871, a post office was established at the site and the settlement 
officially became the Falk Store, according to the recollections of Horace 
Arment in the Daily Argus Observer on Jan. 2, 1976.  More and more businesses 
added to the community in the form of a hotel, saloon, meat market, and a 
blacksmith shop.

Arment knew a few of the pioneers in the Falk vicinity and was hired in 1926 to 
teach elementary school at the Falk Store.  “The local school board, finding no 
other available room for a school, rented a room in the old hotel.  In the 
renovated hotel, desks and blackboards were installed and I became the local 
pedagogue, teaching the sixth, seventh, and eighth grades,” he said.  

One acquaintance of Arment’s was Andre Rasmussen.  He was born in Denmark in 
1849, worked in the Boise Basin mines for a time and then homesteaded in the 
Payette Valley.  At the time, a group of desperados called the Picket gang 
(lead by the sheriff in Boise) were stealing cattle and doing other despicable 
things.  Rasmussen joined a vigilante group that cleared that bunch out of the 
valley; he also was scout in the Nez Perce and Bannock-Paiute wars. 

In the 1870’s, Rasmussen helped build a fortified building at the Falk Store 
because of Indian raids by the Shoshonis.  A fence made of wooden boards and 
piled with gravel behind it to help stop bullets was placed there.  Port holes 
were cut to give the defending settlers a wide angle of fire.  “So we could 
shoot dis vay and dat vay,” Arment remembered Rasmussen saying.  

The settlers from the present Malheur, Payette, and Washington counties would 
rush to the store when the onset of an Indian attack was present.  Arment said 
the pioneers would turn their livestock loose, move the furniture out into the 
sagebrush, and “high-tail it to the fort with all the women and kids.”

At the beginning of the 20th century, the Oregon Short Line Railroad was 
established, making the old stage route obsolete, said Hart.  Arment said the 
narrow gauge railroad, called the “Punkin Vine” after the Payette Valley 
Railroad, carried all kinds of goods around the area.  

To cross the Payette River, a pole bridge was constructed, on which the rails 
were laid.  Arment’s father worked on the railroad and was a portly man, 
similar to W. C. Fields. As the Punkin Vine train would struggle to make the 
grade at the Fruitland bench, his father would get off the caboose and help 
push the train up to the top!

On Feb. 7, 1922, fire gutted the last general store at the settlement.  
Gradually, the other buildings fell into disrepair.  All that is left is a 
rectangle of gravel, of which few people in the county can still locate the 
spot.  Nathan Falk made a prosperous life in Boise and opened the Falk’s ID 
store on Eighth Street there.  The golden oak dining room from the Falk mansion 
was transported to the Idaho Historical Museum.  

So, a thriving community was built and disappeared with the movement of the 
years.    



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