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Morristown, Idaho

Morristown was founded in 1863 by 160 Morrisites, members of a dissenting Mormon sect fleeing repression in Utah. The town grew up next to Camp Connor, built by Colonel Patrick E. Connor, who was the lead perpetrator of the Bear River Massacre against the Shoshone people and who accompanied many of the Morrisites to the area. The first business in Morristown was the blacksmith shop belonging to Danish immigrants Neil and Mary Christofferson Anderson (pictured here). Soldiers left Camp Connor in 1865 and, following a series of extremely cold winters, homesteaders began to abandon Morristown as well. The remaining settlement became the “Lower Town” of nearby Soda Springs, established by Mormons in 1870. A portion of this Lower Town was inundated by Soda Dam in the 1920s.