Famous Idahoans

• Joe Albertson was the founder of the Albertsons grocery store chain in 1939 and opened his first store in Boise, Idaho. He was born in Oklahoma and moved to Caldwell, Idaho when he was three. He later attended the College of Idaho which is now Albertson College in Caldwell.
• Cecil Andrus is a former Democratic Governor of Idaho and United States Secretary of the Interior. He served a combined 14 years as governor, (1971-1977 and 1987-1995) longer than anyone else in Idaho history, and as Interior secretary during the Jimmy Carter Administration. In public life he was noted for his environmentalist views.
• Ezra Taft Benson was born in Whitney, Idaho. He later became the 13th President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and served as the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture for eight years under the Eisenhower administration.
• William E. Borah was known as the “Lion of Idaho.” He was born in Illinois and moved to Boise, Idaho in 1891 where he diligently practiced law. He was elected as a Republican to the U.S. Senate in 1907 and served until his death in 1940. Mt. Borah (Idaho’s highest point), Borah High School (Boise) and Borah Elementary School (Coeur d’Alene) are all named in his memory.
• Gutzon Borglum was the famous sculptor of Mt. Rushmore National Memorial in South Dakota. He was born near Bear Lake, Idaho in 1871.
• Frank F. Church was born in Boise, Idaho in July, 1924. He was a graduate of Boise High School and then Stanford University. After serving as a military intelligence officer in WWII, he practiced law in Boise and then became very active politically. In 1956, he was elected to the U.S. Senate and became the fifth youngest to ever get elected to that position. He took part in a number of government committees and in 1976, sought a nomination for the presidency, but later withdrew. He lost his Senatorial seat in 1980 and was later appointed as the U.S. Delegate to the 21st General Assembly of the United Nations.
• Christin Cooper was a silver medalist in the 1984 Olympics for alpine ski racing.
• Lillian Disney was the wife of the famous Walt Disney. She was born in Lewiston, Idaho in February 1899 and died in Los Angeles, California in 1997. She pledged $50 million towards the construction of the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles which opened in 2003. She was also an ink artist on the film “Plane Crazy” (1928).
• Lou Dobbs was born in Childress, Texas but grew up and attended high school in Rupert, Idaho. He is now the anchor and managing editor of CNN’s Lou Dobbs Moneyline.
• Stacy Dragila is an American pole vaulter and was a standout for the Idaho State University women's track and field team in the mid-1990s. She won the first gold medal in women's pole vaulting at the 2000 Summer Olympics. Her accomplishments also include being a two-time world champion (1999, 2001), a 1997 world indoor champion, and a multi-time world record setter. Dragila resides in Pocatello, Idaho and serves as an assistant coach for Idaho State's track and field team.
• Fred Dubois was a well-known Delegate and Senator from Idaho. He was born in Palestine, Illinois in 1851 and moved to the Idaho Territory in 1880. He was the United States Marshal of Idaho from 1882-1886 and later elected as a Republican Delegate to the 50th and 51st Congresses. After serving as a Delegate he was elected to the United States Senate and served from 1891-1897.
• Bill Fagerbakke is a graduate of the University of Idaho in Moscow, Idaho. He played the assistant coach, Dauber, on the hit television series “Coach” and is now the voice of Patrick, Spongebob Squarepant’s good friend.
• Philo T. Farnsworth emigrated to Rigby, Idaho in 1919 at age 11. At age 14 he came up with a brilliant idea for a cathode-ray tube that would later lead to television. He was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1984.
• Dick Fosbury was born in Portland, Oregon in March 1947. He won an Olympic gold medal in 1968 in the high jump and was the first person to jump over seven feet at an NCAA indoor meet. He also won the NCAA outdoor championship in 1969 however, he is most famous for inventing what is known as the “Fosbury Flop” (jumper goes over bar headfirst and backward). Fosbury is now a practicing civil engineer in Ketchum, Idaho.
• Gretchen Fraser was the first American to win an Olympic gold medal in alpine ski racing and was the first American woman to win a gold medal at the winter Olympics. Fraser was born and raised in Tacoma, Wash., but moved to Sun Valley, Idaho after participating in the prestigious Harriman Cup International Race in 1938.
• Gene Harris was an incredible and inspirational jazz pianist. He formed The Three Sounds in 1956. He retired to Boise, Idaho in 1977 but was persuaded to return to the scene in 1980 and joined the Ray Brown Trio. He now has a festival named after him - the Gene Harris Jazz Festival - which is held annually in Boise since 1998.
• Ernest Hemingway was the famous author of classics such as The Old Man and the Sea, A Farewell to Arms, The Sun Also Rises, and For Whom the Bell Tolls. He arrived in Sun Valley in 1939 and is now buried in Ketchum where he died July 2, 1961.
• Bill Johnson first learned how to ski at the Bogus Basin Ski Resort just outside of Boise, Idaho. In 1984 he became the first American to win a World Cup downhill event and then became the first American male to win an Olympic gold medal in alpine ski racing.
• Harmon Killebrew was born in Payette, Idaho. He played baseball for the Washington Senators, the Minnesota Twins and then the Kansas City Royals. He was elected into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1984.
• Dan O’Brien won the gold medal for the decathlon in the 1996 Olympics where he also earned the title of the World’s Greatest Athlete. He was a three-time World Champion (’91, ’93, ’95) and five-time National Champion Decathlete. O’Brien attended and trained at the University of Idaho in Moscow which is now home to the Dan O’Brien Track and Field Complex.
• Jake Plummer is currently the starting quarterback for the Denver Broncos football team. He was born and raised in Boise, Idaho and attended college at Arizona State University where he played as their starting quarterback for all four years.
• Ezra Pound, was born in Hailey, Idaho in 1885, just 11 miles south of where Ernest Hemingway is now buried. At 18 months, Pound left Idaho to grow up and become one of the controversial movers and shakers of modern literature.
• Paul Revere was born in Harvard, Neb., but he was raised in Boise, Idaho. At age 19, Revere joined a band that later came to be known as Paul Revere and the Raiders, which still entertains audiences today.
• Marjorie Reynolds was born in Buhl, Idaho in August, 1917. She was raised in Los Angeles, Calif., where she grew up to become a well-known actress. She appeared in over sixty films including “Murder in Greenwich Village” (1937) and the seasonal film classic, “Holiday Inn” (1942).
• Sacajawea was born in what is now eastern Idaho around 1790. She was the Shoshone Indian guide and interpreter for explorers Lewis and Clark on their famous expedition of 1805. She was also a highly skilled horse trader and just recently named Idaho’s first-ever business woman by the Idaho Federation of Business and Professional Women.
• Nell Shipman was a silent-era actor, writer and director who produced several films in the 1920s at her Priest Lake studio, Lionhead Lodge.
• J.R. Simplot is sometimes known as the “French Fry King.” He was born in Iowa but moved to Idaho during his teens and founded what is now one of the largest privately-owned companies in the world (ranked #59 in Forbes Magazine in 2004). Based in Boise, Simplot (the company) is one of the world’s largest frozen potato processors, one of the nation’s largest beef-cattle producers and serves as a major agricultural-fertilizer manufacturer.
• Picabo Street was born in Triumph and she first learned how to ski in her hometown of Sun Valley, Idaho. She is a two-time Olympic medalist and she was ranked among the world’s top ten downhill skiers of 1993.
• Lana Turner was born in February, 1921 in Wallace, Idaho. She was born with the name Julia Jean Mildred Frances Turner which was later changed to Lana Turner in Calif. when she began her acting career. She starred in over 50 films including “The Adventures of Marco Polo” (1938), “Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde” (1941), and “The Three Musketeers” (1948).
• Dawn Wells was born in Reno, Nevada in 1938 and as a child, vacationed in Teton Valley, Idaho with her father. After winning the “Miss Nevada” title and representing the state at the 1960 Miss America Pageant she moved to Hollywood and began acting in television shows eventually landing her signature role of Mary Ann Summers on “Gilligan’s Island”. Today, Dawn lives in Los Angeles and Driggs, Idaho where she launched the Idaho Film and Television Institute and holds a film and music festival called SpudFest each summer.