Ira Burton Perrine arrived in the Shoshone Falls area in 1884 and initially homesteaded at the bottom of the Snake River Canyon, where he raised cattle and planted orchards. He later became involved in the tourist business, starting a ferry and a stagecoach service, and building the Blue Lakes Hotel. However, Perrine is best known for his role in the economic development of southern Idaho based on massive irrigation projects, and consequentially, the periodic drying of Shoshone Falls. In 1900 the Twin Falls Land and Water Company was incorporated and filed claim for of water from the Snake River. Perrine's ultimate goal was to irrigate of land. Although this would have been impermissible in other parts of the western US, due to regulations such as those under the Homestead Act which limited each settler's claim to , Perrine's project fell under the boundaries of the 1894 Carey Act, which allowed private companies to construct large-scale irrigation systems in desert regions where the task would be far too great for individual settlers.