Established in 1864, Malad is one of the oldest communities in the state of Idaho. The community received its name from Donald Mackenzie, a French-Canadian trapper, who passed through the valley between 1818 and 1821 with a party of trappers. Some of his men became sick while camped here and, believing that the illness was caused by drinking water from the valley's principal stream, he named it "Malade" meaning sick or bad in the French language. Actually, the water had nothing to do with the men's illness, as it was later learned by the second party led by Jim Bridger between 1832 and 1835. The men had eaten some beaver that were nibbling on the poisonous roots of a certain tree that put a natural arsenic into their flesh. The beaver were immune to the poison because of long-term adaptation, but the trappers suffered from their feast. Malad began largely as a Welsh peopleWelsh Mormon settlement whose settlers brought their Welsh traditions with them. Some of the minutes from early town meetings were taken down in both English and Welsh. The city is very proud of its Welsh heritage. Malad lays claim to having more people of Welsh descent per capita than anywhere outside of Wales http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/wales/south_west/4699459.stm. Malad celebrated its Welsh heritage by holding an annual “eisteddfod”, patterned after the music and poetry contests held in Wales for over 900 years. The eisteddfod was an all-day event with people coming from all over southeastern Idaho. The event featured music, songs and storytelling of Wales. The custom continued until 1916 and the outbreak of World War I. With the goal of renewing the old eisteddfod tradition in Malad, in 2004, the annual http://www.welshfestival.com 'Malad Valley Welsh Festival' was established. In the summer of 1843 John C. Fremont and his party of 39 men passed the spot where Malad City now stands. Mormon prophet Brigham Young came through the Malad Valley in 1855. In 1856, at his request, Utahn members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints migrated to the region. This party of 15 families led by Ezra Barnard traveled to the Malad Valley and established a community by the name of Fort Stuart. The following year in 1857, Fort Stuart was renamed Malad City. A post office was later set up in 1865. By 1886 Malad City was the fastest growing village in eastern Idaho. The city was an important commercial center between Salt Lake and Butte, Montana. In 1906, the railroad reached Malad City, allowing travel to Salt Lake City in only a four hour ride by rail. The population of the city would double over the next 15 years as a result. Malad City experienced a flood when the earthen Deep Creek Dam, northeast of the city, broke June 19, 1910. A magnitude 6.1 earthquake shook the Pocatello Valley near the Idaho-Utah border March 27, 1975. The epicenter was only 15 miles southwest of Malad City which was hit hardest by the quake. Nearly 2/3 of its homes and businesses had some sort of damage. Malad City received national news coverage when a corporate jet carrying eight people including four Coca-Cola executives crashed January 15, 1996 killing all onboard http://www.cnn.com/US/Newsbriefs/9601/01-15/. The large twin-engine turbo-prop was flying from Salt Lake City, Utah to Pocatello, Idaho for a Coca- Cola sales meeting. The Mitsubishi MU-2 aircraft crashed and burned at the base of a canyon 8 miles northwest of Malad. According to the National Transportation Safety Board in its published http://www.ntsb.gov/ntsb/brief.asp?ev_id Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malad_City%2C_Idaho