Old Town Site and Desert

Kimama was settled in the early 1900s by Volga German and Black Sea German immigrants who took up some of the last homesteads available under the Homestead Act, farming difficult, poor soil until irrigation canals from the Snake River reached the area. The community formed its own Salem Congregational Church in 1913 before the congregation relocated to nearby Paul in 1925. On quiet spring, summer, and fall nights in the surrounding desert, visitors report hearing whistling and singing that sounds Russian.