Genesee, Idaho — Railroad Gave the Wheat Somewhere to Go

Genesee sits among the folded hills of the Palouse, where deep windblown loess created extraordinarily productive soil over older basalt.

Nimiipuu and Palus people used this prairie long before non-Native settlement converted much of it to agriculture.

By the late nineteenth century, farms around Genesee were producing more grain than local roads could move efficiently.

The Northern Pacific reached the area in 1888 and made Genesee the terminus of a Palouse branch.

That changed the town.

Grain and livestock moved out; equipment, money and supplies moved in. Banks and substantial commercial buildings followed an agricultural economy that could look modest from a farmhouse and enormous once the harvest was assembled.

Immigrant communities also built churches and institutions across the surrounding countryside.

Modern machinery has changed farming dramatically, but the basic relationship remains.

Genesee exists because fertile hills can grow astonishing amounts of food—and somebody has always needed a practical way to move it.