This year the City of Basalt is celebrating 120 years of being a city in the Snake River Valley, northeast of Firth. To celebrate, the city of about 350 residents held a contest to find a logo that characterizes Basalt today.

The city received 29 different logo designs, mostly from local residents — though there was one from the Philippines that has left the city leaders wondering how their contest went international.

A ballot to vote on the logo designs was sent out with the utility bill for residents to pick three finalists. The international entry wasn’t one of the finalists.

At this month’s City Council meeting the council members voted for the winning logo by a secret written ballot. The results were to be kept secret until a community announcement ceremony the following Saturday.

All went smoothly until the vote was a tie. The residents attending the meeting waited as a second vote was taken between two of the designs, which gave them an unexpected clue of which design might win.

On Saturday, Mikaela Dewey was announced the winner with her line drawing of a wheat stalks framing “Basalt Idaho” which is underscored with railroad tracks. The logo reflects the agriculture nature of the area and the importance of the railroad throughout Basalt’s history.

Dewey was raised in Basalt and now lives just outside of town with her husband and two young boys. Besides being the winner, she was awarded $200.

Basalt, which is pronounced with a long “a” like “Bay-salt”, was first settled in 1885 as a small LDS community of three families. Andrew Otto Inglestom and his wife Marie Elizabeth stopped there one night when they were looking for a place to homestead.

That night Andrew had a dream in which he saw wheat fields, hay fields, rock and brick buildings and a beautiful white church surrounded by trees. The next morning the told his wife and a fellow traveler that, “This is the place where I’m going to stay.”

However, the companion noted that they would never get water up on the bench they were on, so they journeyed on and settled in Robert. Except Andrew was not settled. He couldn’t forget the dream, so he brought his wife back to settle the area then known as Cedar Point, a settlement along the railroad lines.

Fifteen years later the LDS church leaders asked the residents to relocate on the higher ground that overlooked Cedar Point and which was owned by the Friedmans, a Jewish family. They bought the townsite from the Friedmans and started building the town of Basalt. The town was incorporated in 1906, 120 years ago.