If you add all the numbers for the religions it comes to 46%. So I think the 20% is the entire population, not just the religious. The other 54% is not accounted for in the breakdown.
and my niece and nephew and families live in Jerome--both towns not too far from Twin. My sister and husband are still active mormons (though she went inactive for a while--she HATES mormons)--but her kids are very much OUT of the church.
They picked the Twin area for its lack of mormons. The problem is the mormons there are VERY, VERY cliquish. If you weren't born there--you are not accepted.
Lived there for a short time years ago. Found it very closed and clannish. Seemed if you wern't born and raised there,,didn't belong. However that was many years ago and things could have changed.
The N-S-E-W thing wasn't original -- other places had done it before. BY came up with a numbering system that's unique to Mormon towns.
A little research reveals that Twin Falls started out as a stage stop on the Oregon Trail and grew from there. The streets weren't laid out until the 1900s. From Wikipedia:
>>Twin Falls city was founded in 1904 as a planned community, designed by celebrated Franco-American architect Emmanuel Louis Masqueray, with proceeds from sales of townsite lots going toward construction of irrigation canals. The city is named for a nearby waterfall on the Snake River of the same name. In 1907 Twin Falls became the seat of the newly-formed Twin Falls County. The original townsite follows a unique design. It is laid out on northeast-to-southwest and northwest-to-southeast roads. The northwest-to-southeast roads were numbered and called avenues, while the northeast-to-southwest roads were numbered and called streets. <<
I've read a little more about Twin Falls and it sounds as if cows, not Mormons, are the big problem. Dairy stink must be a major headache in that area.
I grew up about 40 miles East of Twin Falls in a more mormon-dominated community. The mormon influence gradually wanes as you go West/Northwest on I-84. Mormons have a significant presence in the area, but do not dominate (like they do in SE Idaho).
its Southern Jerome County & Southern Gooding County that have been over run with very large dairies. Tons of flies, lots of cow manure stink provided by lots of dairy cows. Twin Falls county, across the Snake River to the south, has avoided being turned into a giant cow corral the way Wendell & Jerome have.
The place was wonderful until the 1980's. Lots of cozy old pitcuresque homesteads with small patch work fields that were irrigated by gravity flow ditches, mostly destroyed by now in a land rape in the name of progress. Then came circular sprinklers and massive agri industrial dairy factories where they torture cows and trash the land for the sake dairy production.
Its a little bit pricey but totally worth it so I highly recommend that silk brand almond milk, more nutritious by far than dairy milk & guarandamnteed that it does NOT have any cow crap or cow pee in it the way dairy milk DAMN SURE does (even if its *only* in trace amounts). You think I am joking? Its standard practice for every creamery to test every load of dairy that comes in for contamination..... to make sure its with in acceptable levels! the cows are loaded with hormones/ chemicals to make them produce, & tons of antibiotics to keep them alive in the filthy perma corral conditions they are forced to live in. The dairy industry is a nasty nasty unhealthy thing and its past time for it to become obsolete.
My nephew's son graduated and they had a party. My sister and her husband weren't there while I was. There was a lot of drinking beer. My sister's kids are SO FAR OUT of the church in terms of their beliefs, attitudes, etc. They are a pleasure to be around. Great kids, great families.
My sister's friends are all not mormon. She goes more out of not allowing herself to bite the bullet. Her husband wants her to go. She and I discussed the "mormon royalty" list that was posted here years ago and we laughed too hard!! She said that when they move into a ward, the ward thinks they are mormon royalty and they quickly figure out her husband is royalty and she is the fringe element. They move a lot and I know part of it is because she wants to get away from the ward.
But unless you want to be involved in mormonism, you aren't bothered from what my niece and nephew tell me.
I was there last year for brother's funeral. Didn't notice any stink from dairy farms. There is a large Chobani yogurt plant in town that does a lot of hiring. And Twin has grown tremendously since my brother moved there 40+ years ago when he first got married.
He actually lived outside of Twin in one of the surrounding towns, but his work and office were in Twin. The funeral was in the country ward where the family attended, and it was overflowing with the locals when I was there. They had to open the gymnasium to hold everyone. I believe the stake was there, because the stake president presided over the bishop at my brother's funeral.
There's still a large Mormon presence but you can tell that's changed because of the commercial atmosphere that's taken over the area. It used to be more Mormony than it is now. When bro was a newlywed there and I visited once or twice the town was small then. It has doubled or tripled since.
It still has a country feel to me. It's surrounded by farmland on all sides. And you have to drive for miles of surrounding countryside to get to any other town of significant size. It really still is out in the boondocks IMO. I wouldn't want to live there. It's too isolated.
Last time I stayed to visit was in 2016 at bro's house - he lived in a canyon out in the country. There was a big windstorm the night I was there that sounded like a tornado was whipping through. It freaked me out. What made it worse was he had to get up in the middle of the night to go pick up one of his children from a church or school event. And he had to drive for miles and miles on that canyon road in that screeching, howling wind over bridges and cliffs and such. The thought of him risking life and limb was enough to give me nightmares. I don't know how he raised a family there. But he did.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/11/2019 09:15AM by Amyjo.
I was there about a year ago and stopped at Jaker's for lunch. At the table next to me were some Mormons talking about how they were transitioning out of the church. It made me feel the spirit. They were talking about what a joke the church really is and that the members were finally figuring it out. These people were all in the process of leaving TSCC.
I tried having that kind of talk with my TBM brother when he was alive. (The one who lived near Twin.) But he was happily (or not happily) in denial. He took it with him to the grave. TSCC was for him his security blanket. He would've been lost without it.
It was his identity.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/11/2019 08:21PM by Amyjo.
Identity is an essential characteristic of the human psyche - but how and why some are fulfilled by that which is patently absurd, and not infrequently harmful, baffles me.
Twin Falls looks mormony to me especially with it's new temple. And it's all by itself out in the desert. Boise is quite far. I'd think twice about moving there unless I liked the isolated, western mormon feel, and open vistas, loneliness that dominates the the cowboy culture. The land is cheap for a reason!
Close proximity to a bigger city with lots of people would stay off the winter blues better. California and Oregon sound better to me, but of course there is a price tag for the quality of life.
They have kids who are 18 to 22 and their kids like it, too. None of them are mormon. My niece and nephew didn't marry mormons and they didn't raise their kids mormon.
My sister still lives there as a mormon. She just moved again, probably to move to a new ward as she hates every ward she lives in.
I really like the area. I used to visit there often.