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Idaho Hoaxes (Tap to read)

5/11/2023

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Ralph Thurston, who follows my blog, sent me the clipping below this post. He wondered if I knew of other Idaho hoaxes. I couldn’t find anything else about this “find.” We are assuming it was a hoax because there is not a theme park now built around the 5,000-year-old ruins.
 
But to answer Ralph’s question, yes, I know of a few Idaho hoaxes. Hoaxes, by my definition, do not include April Fool’s Day jokes. Clever and humbling as those are, they just aren’t in the same category.
 
Here are a few I’ve previously written about, with the links to those stories. Probably the most famous and enduring hoax is the Bear Lake Monster. Note that this story includes a decidedly not-hoaxy piece on that big dog in Cottonwood. The William Clark Rock certainly smells like a hoax, though the artifact is still in the Idaho State Archives. Daniel Boone in Idaho qualifies as a hoax, even if the woman who publicized it sincerely believed in its validity.
 
Caleb Lyon, the second governor of Idaho Territory, famously embezzled more than $46,000 from intended for the Boise Shoshoni Tribe while he was in office. It’s less well-known that he started a frenzy of diamond prospecting by claiming that a diamond had been found near Ruby City. Hundreds flocked to stake their claims. Not a single diamond was found.
 
Kenneth Arnold, Idaho’s flying saucer man, is widely credited with starting the UFO mania that continues even today. His 1947 sighting generated a number of UFO hoaxes, perhaps the most famous of which was tied to Twin Falls. Following several sightings in Idaho in July of that year, some Twin Falls residents found a 30-inch disc in their backyard after hearing a thud at 2:30 in the morning. Police confiscated the object, which contained radio tubes, electrical coils, and wires underneath a plexiglass dome. The FBI turned the thing over to Army intelligence. They determined that it had been built by teenage pranksters. It got a lot of publicity before the Army got involved. When Army released a picture (below) of the suspicious disk, UFO reports dropped considerably. The Twin Falls saucer hoax came just three days after Army personnel found a “flying disc” that was later described as a weather balloon near Roswell, New Mexico.
 
There’s one more hoax that deserves a post of its own. Look for that one tomorrow. 

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The hoax that inspired this post.

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On July 12, 1947, the US Army released photos of a hoaxed "flying disc" recovered from Twin Falls. In the wake of the release, flying saucer reports decreased rapidly.
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    Author, Speaker

    Rick Just has been writing about Idaho history since 1989 when he wrote and recorded scripts for the Idaho Centennial Commission’s daily radio program, Idaho Snapshots. One of his Idaho books explores the history of Idaho's state parks: Images of America, Idaho State Parks. Rick also writes a regular column for Boise Weekly.

    Rick does public presentations on Idaho's state park history and the history of the Morrisite war for the Idaho Humanities Council's Speakers Bureau.idahohumanities.org/programs/inquiring-idaho/
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    Check out Rick's history of Idaho State Parks.

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