US Forestry Department

About forestry service, 83211, American Falls, ID, US, Idaho

Ketchum is a city in Blaine County, Idaho, United States. Located in the central part of the state, the population was 3,555 at the 2020 census, up from 2,689 in 2010. Located in the Wood River Valley, Ketchum is adjacent to Sun Valley and the communities share many resources: both sit in the same valley beneath Bald Mountain, with its skiing. The city also draws tourists to its fishing, hiking, trail riding, tennis, shopping, art galleries, and more. The airport for Ketchum, Friedman Memorial Airport, is approximately 15 miles (24 km) south in Hailey. == History == Originally the smelting center of the Warm Springs mining district, the town was first named Leadville in 1880. The postal department decided that was too common and renamed it for David Ketchum, a local trapper and guide who had staked a claim in the basin a year earlier. Smelters were built in the 1880s, with the Philadelphia Smelter, located on Warm Springs Road, processing large amounts of lead and silver for about a decade. After the mining boom subsided in the 1890s, sheepmen from the south drove their flocks north through Ketchum in the summer, to graze in the upper elevation areas of the Pioneer, Boulder, and Sawtooth mountains. By 1920, Ketchum had become the largest sheep-shipping center in the West.