City of Rexburg will celebrate founding in two separate events this month
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REXBURG – Two Founders’ Day events are happening in Rexburg this month to celebrate the community’s heritage.
“Lighting the Way” will be held Tuesday, March 10, at the Romance Theater. This event will mark the historic day Rexburg was founded in 1883. An open house will begin at 7 p.m., followed by a program at 7:30 p.m. with music and speeches highlighting the leadership of Rexburg.
Former city council members will be honored during the program. Newly-elected council members will be introduced to the public and city department heads will be recognized.
The evening will also include the presentation of three Citizen of the Year awards for individuals who have provided exceptional service to the community.
“(The event is) designed to help people know who their leadership is and who runs the city so they feel more involved and see the transparency,” Rexburg Mayor Jerry Merrill says.
The main event is the Founders’ Day Fair, which will be held Saturday, March 14, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. in the Madison School District office gym at 60 West Main Street. The building once served as a high school and junior high, and is scheduled to be torn down later this summer as part of a downtown redevelopment project.
The fair is co-sponsored by the City of Rexburg and the Rexburg-Madison County Historical Society. More than 35 booths and displays will fill the gymnasium. Participating groups include city departments, local businesses, heritage families and community organizations.
The mayor and city council will host a booth, along with representatives from Madison Health, Madison School District, Brigham Young University-Idaho, the Tabernacle Legacy Committee, the Legacy Flight Museum and the Family Crisis Center.
Historical society president Doug Ladle says the goal is to help longtime residents, newcomers and students better understand how Rexburg became what it is today.
“We’ve had such tremendous growth in Rexburg with people moving in,” Ladle said. “We want them to learn about that. We also want our youth to learn what great heritage they have. I want them to walk away saying, ‘I didn’t know that.’”
Visitors will also be able to explore topics such as the restoration of the historic Tabernacle and the upcoming “Flood 50” commemoration, marking 50 years since the 1976 Teton Dam failure and recovery.
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Several longtime businesses and farming families will also participate, including Flamm Funeral Home, Taylor Chevrolet, the Webster family and the Wilcox family. Heritage families such as the Ricks, Rigby and Porter families will highlight their connection to Rexburg’s early days.
Rexburg’s founding
Rexburg’s beginnings date back to March 6, 1883. William F. Rigby — for whom the town of Rigby is named — played a crucial role in its development. It was one of dozens of settlements he helped colonize in the early days of eastern Idaho.
In 1882, John Taylor, then-President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints assigned fellow Latter-day Saints Rigby, William Preston and Thomas Ricks — the namesake for the city of Rexburg — to survey the area and “prepare the way for the rapid colonization of the country.”
In the area where Rexburg is today, the men, according to a history written by Rigby’s granddaughter, spent two years cutting logs to build homes, as well as building roads. Rigby homesteaded on 160 acres of land and bought four lots in town.
Ladle says Rigby and others laid out the streets in Rexburg.
“They were surveying the streets and setting out Main Street (at that time), which was the widest Main Street in Idaho,” Ladle says.
On March 16, 1883, Rigby “formally dedicated the ground and named the new settlement Rexburg in honor of Ricks, whose German stem-name was Rex.”
William, according to one account, helped build the first store in Rexburg. He and his sons, according to another written history, planted a vegetable garden in Rexburg and built a ditch to water the crops they’d planted.
“They have accomplished more in two years in building canals, bridges and making general improvements than I have ever known,” one person said of Rigby and the early settlers.
‘Honoring our past to shape our future’
For Merrill, Rexburg’s story is rooted in the determination of its earliest settlers.
“It’s amazing how the early settlers that came up here transformed the desert into the productive area that it is,” he said. “It went from just a few people trying to farm in the desert into the amazing place it is now with the university and everything else.”
Today, Merrill says the city continues to shape its identity around families.
“We’ve kind of taken on the identity as America’s family community,” he said. “We’re really focused on what we can do to help families flourish and thrive here.”
“Rexburg’s cultural heritage, shaped by the fortitude of our forebears, is a demonstration of hard work, self-reliance, ingenuity, and unity,” Rexburg Cultural Arts Director and Historical Society board member Jedd Platt adds. “The Founders’ Day Fair is a unique opportunity to engage with our history and future, to learn more about ourselves and the place we call home.”
Both Founders’ Day events are free and open to the public.