About Gem County

Home of the Annual Cherry Festival

Gem County was created in 1915 from parts of Boise and Canyon Counties. It boasts only one actual "city" which is Emmett, the county seat. 

Within the County boundaries are the towns of Letha, Sweet, Montour and Ola, and at least one ghost town, Pearl.

Famous Pickett Corral Fort was set in a natural amphitheater made by the bluffs of the Payette River near what is now Emmett.

With a good corral fence, a house and a spring inside, it provided protection for the settlers' stock. It was, however, taken over by horse and cattle thieves and several years of trouble ensued before vigilantes cleared it out for good use again.

The Payette Ranch House near Emmett was one of the first houses in the valley. It was a two-story log house with a saloon and a grocery store on the first floor and with a dance hall and rooms on the second floor.

Gem county's sleepy pastoral setting belies its romantic wild-west history. It's a location that settlers found hard to get to and tough to keep, due to all the raids by Indians, horse and cattle thieves, and bogus gold dust dealers. Finally, however, all the desperadoes, including a renegade Gem County Sheriff, were conquered by heroic vigilantes.

About Pearl

The Pearl cemetery is on private property, in Section 16, Twp. 6 North, Range 1 East, B.M., in the southeast corner of what is now Gem County.

Merle Wells in Gold Camps & Silver Cities, Nineteenth Century Mining in Central and Southern Idaho, Bulletin 22, Idaho Department of Lands, Bureau of Mines and Geology, Moscow, Idaho, estimated that 20,000 ounces of gold, valued at about $400,000 came from the area's early operations.

Silver production fluctuated with the market. A post office was established in November 12, 1895, with Oakley C. Wylie as postmaster, and continued under various postmasters until July 31, 1929. [see Histories of Post Offices in Idaho, Gem County Historical Museum, for complete list]

Houses once crowded the narrow draw on either side of Willow Creek. The 1900 census shows that many people, not only the hotels, took in boarders. The last remaining buildings in the Pearl townsite were razed Spring of 2004.

Mines and mine dumps still dot the landscape. And west of where the town once stood, on a windy hilltop, next to an abandoned road, lies the cemetery.

Pearl Post Masters

• Nov. 12, 1895, Oakley C. Wylie (Post office established)
• July 5, 1904, Hubert S. Richmond
• June 9, 1904, George A. Sprague
• Feb. 27, 1906, Joseph M. Lyon (declined);
• Aug. 4, 1906, Alfred Skippen (did not take possession)
• Jan. 29, 1907, Roy C. Campbell
• Jan. 10, 1908, Albert B. Hicks
• June 2, 1909, Luella M. Von Harten [died 20 Nov 1914, vital statistics; see cemetery file]
• April 9, 1915, Emma L. Von Harten [married Arthur E. Turner June 19, 1915, http://abish.byui.edu/specialCollections]
• May 28, 1919, Jules A. Delamaster;
• March 19 1926, George J. O'Neill;
• discontinued April 18, 1919, mail to Eagle;
• Reopened June 11, Wm. K. Von Harten
• Discontinued May 15, 1923;
• Discontinued July 31, 1929, mail to Eagle