Minidoka National Historical Site

Visited: August 2019

Accommodations: Banbury Hot Springs Hotel

Duration: 1-2 hours

Minidoka National Historic Site was depressing, however I feel my children need to be educated on even the worst times in history. Minidoka was a relocation center for over 13,000 Japanese-Americans. Over 2/3rd of them were American Citizens. Housed on a 33,000 acre site most of its 600 buildings were crowded into 946 acres, making the camp the 7th largest city in Idaho.

When we showed up at Minidoka, we parked out by the guard tower and did the walking tour to the Hermann House, which was the current Visitor Center. They were in the process of building a new interpretive Visitor Center and it looks like it will be amazing! For now the one we visited was an old house. All along the trail were wayside exhibit signs to read.

Once at the Hermann House you can see the Fire Station and the foundation of Water Tower #2. All of the houses are gone, not sure if they will make some models of what was there in the future but you couldn’t go inside any of the buildings. Even the Visitor Center was closed when we arrived, however I noticed a car there so I knew somebody had to be around. Through much persistence a park worker answered the door and let us in 🙂 She was very friendly and let us get our Junior Ranger books, badges, passport cancelations and anything we wanted to purchase. We were very thankful for her that day because we might not ever be back and she was so nice to us with our poor planning of not coming when the VC is open.

I would also like to give a shout out to the wonderful person that found Gunnar’s Hell pig on the interpretive trail and turned it in. I emailed them when we returned home from the trip and they had it, taking great care of him. I donated some money to the Historic Site and WALA……. we have our Hell Pig back 🙂

Not much here, but I think they are working on building more. I really am looking forward to seeing how the new interpretive center looks. Please let me know if you visit I would love to hear all about it. If you are planning a visit and have any questions, please let me know. Thanks for stopping by.