I consider the settling of this valley (the Salt Lake Valley) and how some say it was a fulfillment of Isaiah 35:1, which speaks of the desert blossoming as a rose. And. I consider that if this is true, then the settling of my hometown, Rupert, Idaho, was also a fulfillment.

There stands a plaque in Rupert, proclaiming, "The Desert Blossoms." The area was considered a desert. A river ran through it, but diverting water from it would not serve many. It took what was then modern technology, hydroelectric dams, to make it possible for water to be pumped and canaled to the farms. The timeliness of the technology is attested to by Rupert High School being the first all-electric high school in the nation. Even, then, there was a limit to how many people the water could serve. But, when the Snake Plain Aquifer was discovered in 1947, it opened the area to more settlers. The government then invited military veterans to farm the land. My dad and mom won a farm in the drawing, and became part of the largest homestead farming project in the nation. Dad and Mom had been parade marshals in Manassa, Colorado, for the Pioneer Day and now, this short time later, were pioneers, themselves, opening up new land as America was going through some of its last expansion.

The Minidoka County project (Rupert area) became the largest homestead project in the nation. I've always joked that that kind of makes Rupert the New York City of rural areas.

Anyway, an area that was desert, covered with sagebrush, is now one of the noteworthy agriculture developments that our nation has had. It was once uninhabited. It once was solitary. (It still might be considered, "solitary," depending on how you take that word.) That it lacks natural water is testified to by the fact a strip of land next to my father's farm remained in sagebrush right up past the year Dad sold the farm.

So, would all this be a fulfillment of the prophecy in Isaiah 35:1"The wilderness and the solitary place shall be glad for them; and the desert shall rejoice, and blossom as the rose."