The Photography of Kurt F Fink (kfink.portfolio.com)

ARCO AND ATOMIC CITY In 1955, tiny Arco won fame as the world’s first nuclear-powered city. Today, it mainly serves as a jumping-off point for excursions into the nearby  Craters of the Moon National Monument . Arco is one of Idaho’s strangest little towns, although nearby Atomic City manages to be even stranger. And littler. Besides the lava-scorched earth to the south and a range of mountains to the north which include both Idaho’s highest peak (Mt. Borah) and its most awesomely-named (Appendicitis Hill) the most striking feature of Arco is its “Hill of Numbers”. For decades, the senior classes of the local high school have been decorating the nearest mountain with the last two digits of their graduation year. Graffiti on a grand scale. Arco’s story has been tied to nuclear power ever since our country started experimenting with it. The reason that the government chose this corner of eastern Idaho as one of its nuclear sandboxes is fairly self-evident. Remote and sparsely-populat...

Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve  is a  U.S. national monument  and  national preserve  in the  Snake River Plain  in central  Idaho . It is along  US 20  ( concurrent  with  US 93  and  US 26 ), between the small towns of  Arco  and  Carey , at an average elevation of 5,900 feet (1,800 m)  above sea level . The  protected area 's features are  volcanic  and represent one of the best-preserved  flood basalt  areas in the continental United States. The Monument was established on May 2, 1924. In November 2000, a presidential proclamation by  President Clinton  greatly expanded the Monument area. The 410,000-acre  National Park Service  portions of the expanded Monument were designated as Craters of the Moon National Preserve in August 2002. [1]  It spreads across  Blaine ,  Butte ,  Lincoln ,  Minidoka , an...