Idaho Commission for Libraries

Home Below Hell's Canyon (1954), an autobiographical account by Grace Jordan, describes the Jordan family's life on a remote sheep ranch in the 1930s in the Snake River Canyon south of Lewiston.

Writers reveal not only their love of this difficult land's beauty, but also their joy in working it.

By Susan Swetnam

Many early travelers through Idaho would have agreed with James Clyman, who, crossing on the Oregon Trail in 1844, found little to attract him in what he termed the most Barren Sterril region we have yet passed (Eide 164). Given the state's harsh climate and difficult geography, this assessment is understandable in people wanting to make a living from the land its desert-dryness in the south, steep forested slopes in the north, and deep river canyons, high mountain ranges, and extremes of temperature made crop-raising seem completely infeasible.