Plan could lead to tours of Hemingway House

KETCHUM, Idaho – City officials have approved a plan that would allow limited public use of historic sites, including Ernest Hemingway’s former home.

The decision by the Ketchum Planning and Zoning Commission was a victory for the Idaho Hemingway House Foundation, an organization that hopes to conduct tours and educational programs at the house where the Nobel Prize-winning writer took his own life in 1961.

But the endorsement means only that the commission will make the recommendation to the City Council, which will likely consider the matter later this summer.

The proposed amendment to city code would allow the city to grant permits to organizations to conduct public tours, workshops and educational programs at historically significant sites.

Hemingway’s house sits on 13 acres of pristine land overlooking the Big Wood River. The Ketchum property was granted to The Nature Conservancy by Hemingway’s widow Mary in 1986.

The Nature Conservancy last year signed a memorandum of understanding with the Hemingway House Foundation to allow that group to manage the site. But neighbors of the property have opposed the foundation’s management plan, arguing that tours, workshops and other programs would bring too much traffic and other problems to the neighborhood.