Charlie McMaster’s Horses
BY MYCHEL MATTHEWS
Twin Falls County Historic Preservation Commission
TWIN FALLS – Some came to this new town to make their fortunes. Others brought their fortunes with them.
Charlie McMaster was a prosperous farmer and livestock dealer in Hopkins, Mo., before he brought his family to Idaho. McMaster had heard about the new irrigation tract opening up in southern Idaho, when he and his wife, Della, visited her parents in Boise in 1904.
Before returning to Missouri, McMaster filed on 160 acres on Kimberly Road east of Twin Falls.
McMaster sold his land in Hopkins, and filled three freight cars with personal belongings to take to his new home in Idaho. McMaster and several employees traveled by train to Shoshone, then crossed the desert to Blue Lakes where they ferried the Snake River into what was then Cassia County.
McMaster’s wife and young daughter followed him west after he had a chance to get settled.
When Della McMaster reached her husband’s tent near Kimberly, she was greeted with little enthusiasm.
“Dell, this is no place for you and Georgia,” McMaster said. “You had better go to Boise until we have had time to make the place more fit for you to live in.”
But Della refused to leave. She was determined to make a home in this desert.
Within months, the McMasters built a home on two lots in the 400 block of Third Avenue West in Twin Falls. McMaster and his business partner, Nick Smith, opened a livery stable nearby, and purchased an additional 1,200 acres to farm.
McMaster and Smith began importing livestock from Iowa and Missouri – pedigreed Duroc Jersey hogs and Hereford cattle that would become the foundation for local herds.
But McMaster found his greatest joy in horseflesh.
Seen in this Clarence E. Bisbee photo is a Morgan saddle horse owned by Charlie McMaster – possibly the first Morgan horse brought into Idaho.
McMaster is best remembered for his fine saddle horses, and is known to have brought the first Morgan horse into Idaho.
McMaster also brought in many hundreds of Percheron and Belgian draft horses to clear the desert of sagebrush. Most of these work horses were sold to local farmers on credit. Farmers paid McMaster for their teams only after their crops were harvested.
Over the years, the McMasters continued to prosper. They had a son, Frank, in 1907, and Charlie was elected Twin Falls county commissioner in 1908, the same year he founded Farmers Real Estate, Grain and Livestock Co.
After Charlie’s death in 1936, Della found thousands of dollars worth of unpaid notes in her husband’s belongings – notes signed by local farmers who were unable to pay back their debt to McMaster.
Della gathered all the notes and set fire to them in the alley behind her house.
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