RoadsideThoughts
A Gazetteer for the United States and Canada
Home >> State of Idaho >> Twin Falls County >> Twin Falls >> Genealogy HelperIndex...

Our Genealogy Helper

Introduction ...

We have a couple of goals for our Gazetteer:

  • That it be a tool which helps us with planning our trips.
  • We're trying to shape our Gazetteer as a tool to help us understand the community in which our ancestors lived, the community that was part of their daily lives.
  • On our trips, we try to visit those places where our ancestors left their footprints.

By learning about Twin Falls (and the surrounding area) during the time that our ancestors lived, we hope to have a better understanding of both their community and its relationship to their lifes. We hope that this tool helps to give us an insight into their world.

As we add data and organize our Gazetteer to help with our family research, we will be adding to this our Genealogical Helper for Twin Falls. While we don't have information that is specific to any given person or family, we intend to expand our understanding about where and how people lived.

Neighboring Counties ...

When searching for family records, we have frequently made the mistake of not checking the neighboring counties.

For example, we have great-grandparents who lived in the northwest corner of their home county. During their lives, most hospitals were in the next county to the west. Almost all of the nearby churches and cemeteries were in the county to the north.

So when searching for records, we had our best success by looking in neighboring counties instead of the county in which they lived:  their home county contained property and probate records; the county to the west contained birth and death records; the county to the north contained their burial records. If we hadn't included the neighboring counties, we would have missed many valuable sources of information.

If you're in a similar situation, we hope that the following information helps.

Twin Falls is located in Twin Falls County and is the County Seat.

To see how the shape of Idaho's counties may have changed over time, we recommend the Atlas of Historical County Boundaries.

The following counties adjoin and form the boundaries of Twin Falls County: Cassia, Elmore, Gooding, Jerome, Owyhee & Elko (NV).

Below are the counties that are near Twin Falls. For each of these counties, we show a sample of those communities that are closest to Twin Falls:

  • Twin Falls County     (The home county of Twin Falls)
    • The following are listed by their distance from Twin Falls, with the one closest to Twin Falls listed first.
    • Kimberly
      (5 miles [8 km] to the southeast)
    • Filer
      (7 miles [11.3 km] to the west)
      • Filer is located in Twin Falls County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Filer
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 2,939 people
      • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Filer <1>
    • Hansen
      (8 miles [12.9 km] to the east)
      • Hansen is located in Twin Falls County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Hansen
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 1,290 people
      • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Hansen <1>
    • Clover
      (11 miles [17.7 km] to the west)
      • Clover is located in Twin Falls County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Clover
    • Hollister
      (15 miles [24.1 km] to the southwest)
      • Hollister is located in Twin Falls County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Hollister
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 322 people
    • Buhl
      (15 miles [24.1 km] to the west)
      • Buhl is located in Twin Falls County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Buhl
      • Population from the 2020 Census: 4,524 people
      • Jump to TripAdvisor's Tourism page for Buhl <1>
    • Murtaugh
      (16 miles [25.7 km] to the east)
    • Castleford
      (21 miles [33.8 km] to the west)
    • Rogerson
      (24 miles [38.6 km] to the south)
  • Cassia County
    • Artesian City ‑ Historic
      (18 miles [29 km] to the southeast)
      • Artesian City is located in Cassia County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Artesian City
  • Gooding County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Twin Falls, with the one closest to Twin Falls listed first.
    • Wendell
      (19 miles [30.6 km] to the northwest)
    • Gooding
      (28 miles [45.1 km] to the northwest)
    • Hagerman
      (28 miles [45.1 km] to the northwest)
  • Jerome County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Twin Falls, with the one closest to Twin Falls listed first.
    • Falls City
      (8 miles [12.9 km] to the north)
      • Falls City is located in Jerome County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Falls City
    • Jerome
      (11 miles [17.7 km] to the north)
    • Eden
      (13 miles [20.9 km] to the east)
    • Hazelton
      (16 miles [25.7 km] to the east)
  • Lincoln County
    • The following are listed by their distance from Twin Falls, with the one closest to Twin Falls listed first.
    • Shoshone
      (25 miles [40.2 km] to the north)
    • Dietrich
      (26 miles [41.8 km] to the north)
    • Besslen
      (27 miles [43.5 km] to the northeast)
      • Besslen is located in Lincoln County
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Besslen

For an expanded list of the communities that are closest to Twin Falls, see our County-by-County Page for Twin Falls.

Cemeteries Near Twin Falls ...

Below are cemeteries that are in the vicinity of Twin Falls.

This is a new section and is likely to have errors. If you find an error, such as a missing cemetery or we have the wrong name, please let us know. If you know of them, we would also appreciate learning about previous or alternate names.

Although we don't have the information ourselves, if you need information about a burial or interment, photos, transcripts, how to contact the cemetery or local authorities, please visit our list of websites on our Genealogy Helper Page for Twin Falls - one of the links might be able to help.

If not found below, our Cemetery List for Twin Falls covers a larger area, with the cemeteries listed in alphabetical order.

The following cemeteries are listed based on their distance from Twin Falls, with the one closest to Twin Falls listed first.

  • Sunset Memorial Park
    (Less than 2 miles to the southeast)
  • Twin Falls Cemetery
    (Less than 2 miles to the southeast)
  • Ira Burton Perrine Cemetery
    (3 miles [4.8 km] to the north)
  • IOOF Cemetery
    (6 miles [9.7 km] to the west)
  • Jerome Cemetery
    (10 miles [16.1 km] to the north)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Jerome Cemetery
    • To give a relative sense of its location, the Jerome Cemetery is a large cemetery that is located outside and to the southwest of Jerome.
    • Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #663068 <2>
  • Rock Creek Cemetery
    (10 miles [16.1 km] to the southeast)
  • Clover Lutheran Cemetery
    (12 miles [19.3 km] to the west)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Clover Lutheran Cemetery
    • The Clover Lutheran Cemetery has also been known as:
    • Clover Trinity Lutheran Church Cemetery
  • Trinity Lutheran Church Cemetery
    (12 miles [19.3 km] to the east)
  • West End Cemetery
    (14 miles [22.5 km] to the west)
  • Hazelton Cemetery
    (17 miles [27.4 km] to the east)
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Hazelton Cemetery
    • To give a relative sense of its location, the Hazelton Cemetery is a large cemetery that is located outside and to the northeast of Hazelton.
    • Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #1976931 <2>
  • Bower Cemetery
    (18 miles [29 km] to the southeast)
  • Artesian City Cemetery
    (18 miles [29 km] to the southeast)
  • Continue List   (8 more) ...
    • Wendell Cemetery
      (19 miles [30.6 km] to the northwest)
    • Dietrich Cemetery
      (24 miles [38.6 km] to the north)
    • Shoshone Cemetery
      (26 miles [41.8 km] to the north)
      • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Shoshone Cemetery
      • To give a relative sense of its location, the Shoshone Cemetery is a large cemetery that is located outside and to the east of Shoshone.
      • Jump to Find-A-Grave: FG ID #386943 <2>

Nearby Communities in 1895 ...

We've built the following list with information that came from an Atlas published by Rand McNally in 1895. The Atlas had details such as the population of the community (which appears to have come from the 1890 Census) and whether there was a post office and/or railroad service available. We also indicate if the community no longer exists and is now historic.<4>

While we didn't find Twin Falls in the Atlas, the following 1895 communities would have been found near the current location of Twin Falls.

These communities are listed based on their distance from Twin Falls, with the one closest to Twin Falls listed first.

  • Shoshone
    (25 miles [40.2 km] to the north)
  • Tunupa
    (27 miles [43.5 km] to the north)
    • Tunupa is located in Lincoln County
    • Jump to our Gazetteer entry for Tunupa

We've also created an expanded list of communities that existed in the 1890's and were located in the area around Twin Falls. See our List of 1890's Communities around Twin Falls.

Newspapers Published in the Vicinity of Twin Falls ...

An ongoing effort between the Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has resulted in the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP).

To share their results, the partnership has created the Chronicling America website. The goal of this partnership is to assemble a database about the current and historic newspapers of the United States. This includes a growing collection of scanned images from selected papers. All of it available to the public on their website.

Using information that we've taken from the Chronicling America website, we've identified 40 newspapers that have been published in the area around Twin Falls.

We have organized these newspapers into two lists:

  • A Local Newspaper List - focusing on the papers published in the immediate area of Twin Falls. There are actually two parts to this list - papers printed in the immediate area of Twin Falls and those printed in the larger area surrounding Twin Falls.
  • An Extended Newspaper List - a longer list, sorted by paper name and containing those papers published within 28 miles [45.1 km]<3> of Twin Falls.

Websites to Help With Your Genealogy Research ...

When we do our genealogical research, we first visit the websites from Cyndi's List, FamilySearch and Genealogy Trails. These websites offer the information directly or else point to where you can find it. Their information is open to everyone.

To help you get started, the following links will take you to the pages that are relevant to Twin Falls:

Footnotes ...

<1>While we're fans and frequent users of TripAdvisor, you should know that we're also members of the TripAdvisor affiliate program.
<2>The Find-a-Grave website is an excellent research tool with information about a cemetery's location and interments. They also offer a forum for their members which can provide additional help. More information about Find-a-Grave can be found on their website: findagrave.com.
<3>Our distances are not driving distances, but are calculated as a 'straight-line' (or point-to-point) distance. A straight line distance ignores things like rivers, canyons, lakes, et cetera - it's truly a line drawn from Point A (ie- Twin Falls) to Point B. In other words: 'As the crow flies'.
<4>We use the term 'Historic' broadly and it generally means that the community no longer exists. However, it can also mean that the community might still exist, but was significantly larger or had a more 'official' existence in the past than it does now. Unfortunately our sources of data have proven to be unreliable. If you can provide us with more specific information about Twin Falls, please let us know so that we can improve our accuracy.