Freedom, Wyo. in Star Valley

Freedom, Wyo., is a little town in Star Valley that most of us have either never heard of or never paid much attention to as we drove through it on the way to Soda Springs, Idaho.

As it turns out, the little ghost town has quite a history. Settled in the late 1800s by Mormons, Freedom is divided by the state line between Idaho and Wyoming. It was once the largest commercial center in the Salt River valley. Lower Valley Power & Light, now Lower Valley Energy, the power supplier of Jackson Hole and much of northwest Wyoming, opened its first office in Freedom. It is now the home of not only Freedom Arms, Inc, but Silver Star Communications.

Today, it looks much like a ghost town with empty, boarded up buildings lining streets that once housed thriving grocery stores and banks.And locals are worried not about just about downtown’s future, but the threat of subdivisions taking over old, family run farms.

This spring, the editor of 22Local, Sabra Ayres, and Alden Wood, the video producer at Circumerro, chose Freedom as the topic for a short, 10-minute documentary and submitted it to the Wyoming Short Film Contest. You can view it here.

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