J. R. Simplot

Born in Dubuque, Iowa, he was the third of six children of Charles R. and Dorothy (Haxby) Simplot. A year later in 1910, the family relocated a thousand miles (1,600 km) west to homestead in the newly irrigated Magic Valley of south central Idaho; the Minidoka Dam on the Snake River was completed a few years earlier. After differences with his father, Simplot left school in the eighth grade at age 14 in 1923, then worked on a farm near Declo in Cassia County. He developed a low-cost method for feeding hogs when the market fell, feeding them wild horse meat and potatoes. When the market recovered, Simplot sold his hogs at a profit and got into the potato and vegetable processing business.

Simplot's maternal grandmother was English, as were both parents of both his maternal grandfather and paternal grandmother. His paternal great-grandparents were French: Henry Simplot (1806–1846) of Besançon and Susan Le Clare (1811–1876). Both emigrated to the United States in their teens and first met in upstate New York at Parish, where they married in 1831. After living there and Illinois, the couple settled in Dubuque in 1836. Their second son was Charles Le Clare Simplot (1838–1900), father of Charles Richard Simplot (1883–1974).