Blackfoot murals a draw for locals, visitors

A small investment in outdoor art has paid big dividends for one Eastern Idaho community’s downtown.

“Blackfoot has tried several things to spruce-up downtown and revive its downtown businesses, and the real stand-out success of all of those has been the murals,” said Kurt Hibbert, who handles economic development for the city.

Murals at the Eastern Idaho State Fair and the Blackfoot Canvas building have been fixtures for over 20 years, and more recently Blackfoot added a set of eight downtown murals created between 2017 to 2018.

The city of approximately 14,000 halfway between Pocatello and Idaho Falls is the seat of Bingham County, which grows more potatoes than any other county in the state. It is home to several potato-based businesses like Nonpareil potato packers, Basic American Foods, BioLogiQ, which makes plastic out of potatoes, and the aptly-named potato equipment manufacturer Spudnik.

Unsurprisingly, Blackfoot lays claim to the title of “Potato Capital of the World.” The city is also the home of the Idaho Potato Museum, home of the world’s largest potato chip. In front of the museum is the world’s largest baked potato.

Like many other downtown districts left behind when retail moved away to big box stores and more modern strip malls next to the interstate, Blackfoot’s downtown has seen better days. The Blackfoot Downtown Development Board and the Blackfoot Urban Renewal Agency decided to do something about it back in 2017.

As part of their effort, they created a walking tour through time starting at the Potato Museum, where each block of downtown was dressed up as one era of Blackfoot’s history.

By the summer of 2018, once-vacant store windows were now filled with historically-themed artwork or mannequins dressed in vintage clothing. Mint-condition antique cars of the appropriate time period occupied downtown parking spaces, and eight murals centered on a time slice in the 20th century filled once-empty walls on the sides of downtown buildings, including city hall.

Since then, the murals in the heart of downtown have become a draw. Visitors to the Potato Museum are often drawn into the adjacent blocks downtown to look at them. The development board now owns a trolley bus that takes visitors on a tour of Blackfoot and stops at the murals.

A number of Blackfoot residents queried by the Idaho Business Review said they thought the murals were a real asset to the city.

Paul Loomis, owner of the Candy Jar, a candy and fudge shop across the street from the Potato Museum, was Blackfoot’s mayor when the mural project was approved.

According to Loomis, a designer in St. George, Utah, named Lyn Leasure worked with Rexburg-based artist Jon Hanley, to create the murals. Leasure designed the murals to fit into the idea of walking through time.

“Leasure went to the Potato Museum and the Bingham County Historical Society and found old photos of downtown at different times in history,” Loomis explained. “He then passed his research on to Hanley who used it to create the murals, often showing a business that once existed where a mural was placed.”

One example is a mural on the side of the building where the Candy Jar is now located. It depicts the Rockwood’s Pharmacy, a business that once occupied the space. Details such as posters and posted bills depicted in the Rockwood Pharmacy mural and the Tumbleweed Saloon mural across the street are based on advertisements preserved in the archives of the historical society.

“It took just under a year for Hanley to finish all the murals,” Hibbert related. “I think they look great, and they bring people into downtown who otherwise would not have taken the time to walk around and look around. And they really add to the ambiance of downtown. It looks so much happier and brighter than it did even just five years ago. It’s some of the best return on money that Blackfoot ever invested in our downtown.”

Local reaction to the murals from business owners has also been positive. As the late Travis Pittman, original co-owner of the Downtown Bread Company told the Morning News in 2018: “I serve on the City’s Downtown Development Board, and these murals have helped my business tremendously.”

An interesting footnote to Blackfoot’s murals is the inclusion of four of the city’s murals as “portals” to be captured in the international capture-the-flag style smart-phone game called Ingress, and are also Pokemon Gyms in the Pokemon Go game, both of which are products of the gaming company Niantic Labs.