At the end of the 19th Century, new Homestead Acts and aggressive real estate promotions assured potential settlers that farm land—lots of it—was available, particularly around Eagle Rock, a former railroad town on the upper Snake River Plain. Heavy investments into a network of canals along the river had paid off: water was turning the bunch grass ranges into farms and irrigated agriculture was poised to put Eagle Rock on the national map.
Eager to profit from the extraordinary opportunities being offered by this economic shift, twenty-year-old Frank K. Hitt left Blackburn, Mo., in 1888 and headed west to Idaho Territory. A need for money, and perhaps a bit of adventure, motivated the young fortune hunter to work a season or two with an outfitter and guide in Yellowstone National Park, the country’s newest attraction. But, within a decade of his arrival, Frank Hitt, alongside scores of others who had answered a promoter’s call, would be farming and raising livestock.
Somehow, Frank managed to acquire the original Beam homestead north of town in a community called Jarnigan, later named St. Leon. The Beams had been among the first settlers and early promoters of irrigation along Willow Creek, a drainage that now feeds into the Snake River through Idaho Falls’ Freeman Park. By the time Frank took possession, the farm was already established, and the November 10, 1899, issue of The Idaho Register reported that in addition to the shipment of “six cars of fine cattle to Omaha,” Frank Hitt was also storing potatoes in the cellar of one of the town’s businesses. “He has nearly two car loads in there now.”
Complimenting his success as farmer and businessman, Frank Hitt was also good company. He liked being around people, andin turn, he seemed to be “thoroughly liked by all with whom he came in contact.” Close friends said, “He could easily have been the first person to shake your hand if you had been one of the many newcomers who came to town after 1890.”
Frank Hitt also had his critics. Some called him a dandy, perhaps for good reason. His charming good looks, curly blond hair and blue eyes were disarming. Others said he was a ne’er do well and accused him of playing the gentleman farmer whose presence at Jarnigan was merely a formality. Frank joked in return that it was because “there were too many skunks out there.”
Yet most folks, like H. C. “Bud” Frew and George Haroldsen, two 17-year-olds from neighboring farms, thought him warmhearted and generous. Hired by Frank to accompany his cattle shipments to Midwest markets, the young boys, who probably left in a cattle car, returned in a coach with silver dollars in their pockets and stories to last a lifetime.
Frank Hitt was never stingy with his charm. He shook hands with farmers, ranchers, and merchants alike; a few of whom had arrived when the town was merely a settlement at Matt Taylor’s toll bridge.
Robert and J.C. Anderson, brothers-in-law to Matt Taylor, started with a trading post, store, and post office. After the Utah and Northern Railroad arrived and boomed the new town of Eagle Rock, the Andersons invested in land and development projects.
Well after Eagle Rock was renamed Idaho Falls in celebration of its new role in the western agricultural empire, the Anderson Brothers Bank would remain an economic force in southeastern Idaho until sold to the First Security system in 1941. Their best known employee would also influence the city--in many ways.
Minnie Gibson was just seventeen years old when she arrived in Eagle Rock in 1889 with her widowed mother and younger sister.A pretty and vivacious young woman, she was hired by Robert and J.C. Anderson to work in their bank, a natural fit for Minnie who was said to “have a good head for figures.” A vast understatement when considering her remarkable banking career would span decades and be among the first for women in Idaho. Her savvy personal investments would also make her a very wealthy woman.
Arriving in Eagle Rock within a yearof each other, Frank Hitt and Minnie Gibson made an early acquaintance, both professionally and socially. How many men in those heady times of new land and easy money could brag that their banker was the prettiest girl in town?
Young and exuberant, Frank and Minnie reflected those times. They caught the town’s attention, and where they went and what she wore often made the social news in The Idaho Register. March 3, 1893: At the grand ball, Miss Minnie Gibson, secretary of the Terpsichorean Club, “wore a Josephine gown of cream surah silk, full puff sleeves of lavender pink.” With Frank Hitt, who had just “taken over as manager for the hometown baseball team,” she had danced to the music of Alma Marker’s orchestra.
There was open talk of an engagement, and quiet talk of a substantial financial investment that Minnie Gibson had made in Frank’s cattle feeding operation at Jarnigan. But for the new couple, it seemed irrelevant: they were committed to each other in either case. Imagine, then, the shock when news reached Idaho Falls that Frank Hitt had been shot!
Always mindful of the dashing figure he presented, Frank Hitt had purchased a team of fine matched bays to pull his buggy. From the famous stock bred by Samuel F. Taylor, Frank knew those horses would turn heads: what he didn’t know was how fast that could get him into trouble.
In 1870, Samuel F. Taylor came west to work as a liveryman at his cousin’s toll bridge. He remained, expanded his livery business when Eagle Rock grew, and raised livestock on his foothills ranch below Taylor Mountain, his namesake.
Taylor would be influential in Idaho politics, but, before his election to the Territorial Legislature and his tenure with the new state’s constitutional convention, he would be well-known for breeding champion trotting horses.
Taylor eventually sold his holdings—land and horses-- to Nels Hoff who called the foothills property Rainbow Ranch. Local artist, Marilyn Hoff Hansen, granddaughter of Nels Hoff and famous creator of horses in her own right, grew up on Rainbow Ranch. She tells the story of her father Mark’s ability to recognize, wherever he encountered them, the powerful lines and classical beauty of those famous trotters that became prized buggy horses for the town’s early residents. They were a temptation Frank Hitt could not refuse.
In July 1901, The Idaho Register reported that Frank Hitt had gone to Blackfoot to witness a marriage and had been introduced to a young woman named Mrs. Hilton, the wife of a Utah and Northern brakeman. Coming out of the courthouse after the ceremony, Mrs. Hilton “remarked about the pretty team Hitt was driving and said she would like to ride behind it.”
That was all the encouragement Frank needed to promptly invite her and her lady
companion to take a short ride. Declining the invitation, Mrs. Hilton’s companion watched as her friend climbed into the buggy behind the pretty bay horses and next to Frank Hitt.
Upon returning from their ride, Mrs. Hilton alighted from the buggy in front of the place where she was staying. With Frank still seated, the lady’s husband, who had been hiding nearby, “[came] up and without a word commenced shooting.” It is possible that Mr. Hilton actually mistook Frank Hitt for someone else, because “as soon as Frank spoke to Hilton, he stopped shooting.”Unfortunately, it was not before Frank had taken “one bullet in the right lung and three in his right arm.”
Quickly reacting to the report that Frank was not expected to live, Minnie Gibson, in the company of her cousin, J. F. Ramsey, and Dr. Pendleton, headed south to Blackfoot “on the midnight train.” They returned to Idaho Falls with Frank. On July 12, 1901, the day after the infamous encounter, Minnie Gibson married Frank Hitt.
Locals were quick to point out that Minnie had surely married Frank to protect her investments: she had wed her collateral.
Five days later, The Idaho Register printed an encouraging report. All three bullets had passed through Frank’s right arm, and “although it may affect his arm for a long time, there will be no necessity of amputation as no bones were broken. One bullet is still in his right lung and no attempt will be made at present to extract it. If he gets along all right during the next two days, he may be considered out of danger, and his speedy recovery looked for.”
In 1903, the sidewalks ended at the city canal, a diversion that followed what is now South Boulevard and provided water for the city’s first power plant. East across the canal, wind still blew dirt through sagebrush and around the houses dotting the hardpan that would soon become the Crow’s Addition to Idaho Falls.
But not so on Ridge Avenue, the “Street of the Aristocrats,” where at the corner with Ash Street, Frank and Minnie Hitt built a turreted brick mansion two and a half stories high, the most expensive of eighty houses constructed that year. With his marriage to Minnie only thirteen years old, Frank Hitt died in that house May 14, 1914. At the early age of forty-six, his death came “after an illness covering a long period.”
Barbara Frew Koster, daughter of H.C. “Bud” Frew who had worked for Frank Hitt years before, took charge of Minnie’s personal items after her death in 1959 at the age of eighty-six. Sorting through the collection, she discovered an aged bundle of letters. All were from Frank, all postmarked Yellowstone Park, and all written to Minnie before they were married. Sad that she had discovered her friend’s tender secret, Barbara quietly burned each one. She later explained, “Frank may have been a ne’er do well, but he sure had a way with the ladies.”