An afternoon downtown: the museum, the arts center and the benches you can sit on

Historic downtown Idaho Falls sits on the original townsite, a few blocks on the east side of the Snake River. It is small. That is the good news. The Museum of Idaho, the Willard Arts Center, the Art Museum of Eastern Idaho and the island garden on Broadway all fall within about half a mile of each other in a straight line, so one parking spot and a pair of walking shoes cover the afternoon.

Here is one way to spend four or five hours, roughly in walking order.

Start at the Museum of Idaho

The museum is at 200 North Eastern Avenue, and the building has a history of its own. The front section went up between 1914 and 1916 as the town's Carnegie library. When the library moved out in 1977, the Bonneville County Historical Society kept the building from being torn down and opened a county museum there in 1985. In 2000 Greg Carr gave the former Masonic Temple next door, a two-story atrium joined the two, and the result opened in 2003 as the Museum of Idaho. A traveling-exhibit hall was added in 2019.

The permanent exhibit is called Way Out West. It runs through seven galleries, from Idaho Origins and Out of the Rocks to A Complex State and Idaho Impact, and the subject is the social and environmental history of Idaho and the wider Intermountain West. Children get their own space, the Marie Putnam Discovery Room.

The museum is also known for its traveling exhibits, on all sorts of subjects. They change on the museum's schedule, so look at what is showing before you go. About 90,000 people visit a year.

Give the museum two hours if you read the labels. One if you do not.

Walk over to A Street

The Willard Arts Center on A Street, a few blocks from the museum, holds the Colonial Theater and gallery space. The Idaho Falls Arts Council owns and runs both, and it publishes the theater's calendar.

If nothing is on stage, walk the galleries. If a show is on that evening, this is the stop that turns an afternoon into a full day downtown.

Sit on the art

On the way, look at what you are sitting on. Art You Can Sit On is a public art project that put artist-designed benches through downtown and along the river. The designs were picked from more than 250 submissions by area artists and paid for by local businesses and residents. Some picture the river and its wildlife. Others are harder to miss: one has legs and feet, another looks like a stack of pillows.

The Arts Council has a map of where the benches are. It also says benches sometimes move before the map catches up, so a missing one is not your mistake.

The Art Museum of Eastern Idaho

The Art Museum of Eastern Idaho is on South Capital Avenue, a short walk west toward the river. Look up its current exhibitions before you count on one.

Down to the river

Broadway runs west out of downtown to the bridge, and the Japanese Friendship Garden sits on the island right there at 600 West Broadway. It was built in 2011 for the sister-city tie with Tokai-mura, Japan, and there is no reservation needed to walk through. From the garden you are on the River Walk. If you still have legs left, the city's Broadway to Pancheri loop is 1.4 miles.

If it is a summer Saturday

The Idaho Falls Farmers' Market sets up on Memorial Drive downtown on Saturdays from May through October, beside the river. The organizers list more than 130 vendors. Go early in the day if you want produce; plan the museum for after.

Food and a drink before you head home

Downtown is where the bars concentrate. Of the 23 bars in our listings, 10 are within about four-tenths of a mile of Civitan Plaza on Park Avenue. Restaurants, coffee shops and bakeries are mixed in along Park Avenue, Shoup Avenue, A Street and Memorial Drive, and a handful sit on River Parkway.

We do not rank or review any of them. The Bars, Coffee Shops, Restaurants and Mexican pages each list what we hold, with street addresses, so you can see what is a block away from where you parked.

Before you go

Check hours with each place directly. We do not publish hours on this site, and a locked door is the one surprise this walk can hand you.