Simon J. Friedman

spent several years in Salt Lake City and small towns in Utah before finding his way to the recently-established Idaho Territory in Spring 1881 after hearing about the silver and lead discoveries in the Wood River Valley.

When Friedman arrived in Hailey in Spring 1881, the town had just been platted, so he set up a 20 by 40 foot tent and began selling dry goods, clothing, and boots.

His construction methods in 1881 had been uniquely fireproof, including his decision to cover the windows with steel shutters and to pack a foot of dirt underneath the building’s roof.

Friedman served as the unofficial leader of Hailey’s Jewish community, which boomed along with the town’s mining fortunes and peaked at several dozen people in the 1880s and early 1890s.

[3] In April 1886, Friedman traveled to Salt Lake City and married Luscha Meyer (1864-1948), who moved back to Hailey with her new husband and served alongside him as a leading Jewish woman in the town.

S.J. Friedman's store in the 1880s
S.J. Friedman’s store, pictured here in the mid-1880s, sold dry goods. His cousin S.M. Friedman later opened a store next door in the building labeled here as W.H. Remington’s.