The Idaho legislature of 1913 passed the act—approved January 28th of that year— creating Gooding County out of the western part of Lincoln County, and the history of the new county is thus an integral part of that of the county from which it was segregated. Gooding County, named in honor of ex-Governor Frank R. Gooding, is of the same relative length from north to south as is Lincoln County and Blaine County constitutes the northern boundary of both. The southern boundary of Gooding County is irregular, as defined by the original line between Lincoln and Twin Falls counties, and at the west lies Elmore County, the southwestern corner of the new county touching Owyhee County. As roughly estimated Gooding county has an area of seven hundred and twenty square miles. The county seat is Gooding, a flourishing and attractive little city, with a population of two thousand. This village, which is incorporated, is situated on the Big Wood River and is on the Oregon Short Line Railroad, sixteen miles west of Shoshone, the judicial center of Lincoln County. Gooding has excellent municipal improvements, has six churches, a creamery, a grain elevator, two banks, two weekly newspapers, and a monthly paper devoted to the wool-growing industry. Here is located the Idaho State School for the Deaf, Dumb and Blind. Like the county from which it was taken, Gooding County claims agriculture, stock-growing, and fruit-raising as its principal industries.

The village of Bliss claims a population of about two hundred and is situated twenty-nine miles west of Shoshone, on the Snake River. It has a bank, a hotel and mercantile establishments adequate to meeting the demands placed upon them. Twenty-five miles southwest of Shoshone is situated the village of Wendell, the second in importance in the new county, with a population of four hundred. This town is on the Oregon Short Line Railroad, has a well-equipped electric-light and water system, a weekly paper, a hotel, a commercial club, two banks, and four churches. Minor hamlets and villages in the county give needed facilities in the districts in which they are located.

The young and ambitious little city of Gooding is making rapid and substantial progress. From a pamphlet issued by the Gooding Commercial Club are gleaned a number of pertinent facts. By its geographical location and excellent railway facilities Gooding is the logical commercial center of more than a million irrigated acres which lie within a radius of one hundred miles of it. This makes it the center of the largest irrigated section of the United States, if not the entire world. Gooding has an equable climate and its altitude is 3,600 feet. The town has electric lights and power, a splendid system of municipal water works, supplied from a deep well of pure water, and its other attractions are of most definite order, so that it is destined to be one of the important industrial and commercial centers of southern Idaho. The lands of Gooding County are largely irrigated by the admirable system which derives its supply of water from the Big Wood River, a mountain stream having a watershed so formed as to give the river two flood-water periods each year. The flood waters are retained for irrigation purposes by the big dam at the Magic reservoir, which is all that its name implies. The gigantic reservoir may be filled twice each season and it is stated that no other irrigation system in the West has "such a double cinch on its water supply."

[HISTORY OF IDAHO VOLUME I; BY HIRAM T. FRENCH, M. S.; Publ. 1914; Transcribed and submitted to Genealogy Trails by Andrea Stawski Pack.]