Shoshone Falls

Shoshone Falls is 45 feet (14 m) higher than Niagara, and as early as 1866 a newspaper was calling it the Niagara of the West. The Snake River drops 212 feet (65 m) over a horseshoe-shaped rim about 925 feet (282 m) wide, inside the Snake River Canyon just outside Twin Falls. Much of the canyon was scoured by the Bonneville Flood, when prehistoric Lake Bonneville burst through a natural dam in Idaho roughly 14,500 years ago and sent an enormous surge of water down the Snake.

For thousands of years the falls marked the upstream limit of salmon on the Snake, which made the site a major fishing and trading place for Shoshone peoples. Today its power is shaped by human hands. Upstream diversions for irrigation can cut the river to a thin scenic flow in late summer and dry years, while wet springs can push more than 20,000 cubic feet per second (570 m³/s) over the edge. A hydroelectric plant has operated at the falls since 1907. In 1974 Evel Knievel attempted his rocket-powered Snake River Canyon jump about a mile to the west.

• Idaho
  The Gem State, a rugged northern Rockies landscape located in
• The Snake River
  The Columbia's largest tributary, carver of Hells Canyon part of
• Hells Canyon
  The Snake River gorge on the Oregon-Idaho line, deeper than Grand Canyon related
• Niagara Falls
  The famous falls on the Niagara River related