Tarzan of the Apes. The setting for those stories was deepest, darkest Africa, but the author spent some of his early days in deepest, darkest... Pocatello.
Edgar Rice Burroughs came to the state in the mid 1890s. His brothers worked on a ranch their father had purchased near Yale, Idaho (which the brothers, Yale graduates, had convinced the postal service to name) and he got a job there, too, as a cowhand. But he didn’t stick with any job very long. Burroughs worked for a local dredge company for a while, then found himself unemployed.
With the help of his brother Harry, Edgar Rice Burroughs purchased a stationery and cigar store in Pocatello at 233 West Center Street in 1898. He also established a Pocatello delivery service, sometimes delivering newspapers himself from the back of a black horse named Crow. It turned out that Burroughs was not as successful at selling books as he would later become at writing them. He sold the failing Pocatello store a year after he bought it.
He tried ranching again. He worked for a dredge company again, this time in Minidoka. He lived in the Stanley Basin for a while, and even ran for office in 1904 in Parma, where he was elected alderman.
Eventually Burroughs moved out of Idaho. His continued bouts of unemployment gave him time to try his hand at writing. In 1914 he published a book called "Tarzan of the Apes," and its character became an international fictional hero. Edgar Rice Burroughs, a writer shaped in part by his many years in Idaho.
For much more on his Idaho connection, just Google Edgar Rice Burroughs Idaho.
Edgar Rice Burroughs came to the state in the mid 1890s. His brothers worked on a ranch their father had purchased near Yale, Idaho (which the brothers, Yale graduates, had convinced the postal service to name) and he got a job there, too, as a cowhand. But he didn’t stick with any job very long. Burroughs worked for a local dredge company for a while, then found himself unemployed.
With the help of his brother Harry, Edgar Rice Burroughs purchased a stationery and cigar store in Pocatello at 233 West Center Street in 1898. He also established a Pocatello delivery service, sometimes delivering newspapers himself from the back of a black horse named Crow. It turned out that Burroughs was not as successful at selling books as he would later become at writing them. He sold the failing Pocatello store a year after he bought it.
He tried ranching again. He worked for a dredge company again, this time in Minidoka. He lived in the Stanley Basin for a while, and even ran for office in 1904 in Parma, where he was elected alderman.
Eventually Burroughs moved out of Idaho. His continued bouts of unemployment gave him time to try his hand at writing. In 1914 he published a book called "Tarzan of the Apes," and its character became an international fictional hero. Edgar Rice Burroughs, a writer shaped in part by his many years in Idaho.
For much more on his Idaho connection, just Google Edgar Rice Burroughs Idaho.
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