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,[citation needed] up from 2,689 in 2010.

The city also draws tourists to its fishing, hiking, trail riding, tennis, shopping, art galleries, and more.

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,[3] a local trapper and guide who had staked a claim in the basin a year earlier.

[4] 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.

In the fall, massive flocks of sheep flowed south into the town's livestock corrals at the Union Pacific Railroad's railhead, which connected to the main line at Shoshone.

[5] After the development of Sun Valley by the Union Pacific Railroad in 1936, Ketchum became popular with celebrities, including Gary Cooper and Ernest Hemingway.

[6][7] Hemingway loved the surrounding area; he fished, hunted, and in the late 1950s bought a home[8] overlooking the Big Wood River near the city.

It was there he committed suicide; he and his wife Mary,[9][10] his granddaughter, model and actress Margaux Hemingway, are buried in the Ketchum Cemetery.

[21] The county is in the catchment area[clarification needed], but not the taxation zone, for College of Southern Idaho.