Presentation Transcript

“Historic Land Use in the Treasure Valley: A Changing Landscape” Presentation for COMPASS by: Barbara Perry-Bauer, The Arrowrock Group, Inc. Idaho Historical Museum, Boise, ID May 25, 2005 [Terri Schorzman, COMPASS]: Welcome. This is the first presentation of a series that COMPASS is holding, called “Planning our Future.” We are offering these things for several reasons. One of the reasons we are offering these is that we have heard from so many people in the past year about their concerns and issues regarding growth and transportation. So we would like to respond to the needs and in doing so hope that we keep you engaged in the planning process, Communities in Motion and Blueprint for Good Growth. It is also part of COMPASS’ broader goal of communicating and disseminating information in a clear and concise manner; we deal with very technical issues and technical work and we want to make sure that the public is engaged at every level that is clear and understandable. We are starting this evening with a topic Historic Land Use in the Treasure Valley: A Changing Landscape. We are doing this to provide an overview of growth and change over the past decade. The late Daniel Boorstein, a former Librarian of Congress and historian, said that, “Trying to plan for the future without knowing the past is like trying to plant cut flowers.” This is our opportunity to understand our region historically as a fully rooted plant.” Our speaker this evening will provide that content. Barbara Perry-Bauer is a historian with expertise in community in local history, historic preservation, and environmental history. Before co-founding The Arrowrock Group over a decade ago, she held positions as the Director of the Basque Museum of Cultural Center in Boise, Collection Manager at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyoming. She has participated in numerous historic site surveys and documentation projects, directed a living large scale survey in Ada County and Historic neighborhoods in Boise, Caldwell, and Pocatello. Ms. Bauer is currently writing a book titled History of South Boise: A Historic Neighborhood and has co-authored A Pattern of the Past: Ada County’s Direct Site Inventory, which came out several years ago. She holds a master’s degree from Boise State University. Welcome, Barbara. [Barbara Perry-Bauer] I wanted to thank COMPASS for asking me to do this talk and always need to thank my sister who is my business partner and who encourages me to get up here and talk to all of you. This is going to be a thumbnail sketch and overview of Ada [County] & Canyon County. There is so much information out there that I wanted to talk about but trying to compress it into something that would fit into an hour was rather difficult. So, I am hoping this gives you an idea of why our communities are placed where they are throughout the area and why growth may have occurred where it did and also why things like irrigation are so important to the area and transportation important to the area. I hope that you will get all of that out of my talk. Before I finish the other people I would like to thank are all of the local historians out there. So much of the information that we get about our local history comes from people that are interested in our community. People like Lila Hill who has written, The History of Meridian. Annie Lori Bird who is a long time resident from Nampa wrote about My Hometown. All of those local histories provide so much information if you are interested in your community. I hope that this thumbnail overview of local history of Ada and Canyon Counties will intrigue. I am open to questions after I am done speaking. I think that is goes without saying that the Boise River is probably the most important feature for development of our valley. The Boise River provided Native Americans with water that supplied fish for food and the Valley provided grasses for grazing and shelter. Fur trappers followed the river for beaver and portable water. The Hudson Spade Company established Fort Boise at the confluence of the Boise River with the Snake River. It was used from 1834 to 1854 as a trading post and it was a stop on the Oregon Trail, eventually it was abandoned. Discovery of gold in 1862 on the Boise Basin northeast of the Boise Valley brought an influx of miners into the region. In 1863, a new Fort Boise was constructed at the crossroads of the Oregon Trail and the road to the Boise Basin mines. The new fort attracted settlers and at the end of 1864 there were 100 residents in the Boise area. Throughout the southwestern mining region during the summer of 1863 there were about 19,000 miners in the southwest Idaho mining region. They were coming to the area by stage and were freighting supplies by way of Walla Walla and Salt Lake City. I always like to talk a little bit about Cyrus Jacobs. Cy Jacobs was one of the earliest settlers in Boise. He came here as a merchant and he had connection in Walla Walla [Washington], so when Fort Boise was established it was really a prime spot for him to start his business. Cy Jacobs Uberagga House of course is known to many of us as the Basque Museum and Cultural Center. The house was built in 1864. The front of the house is the original structure and the addition was put on in 1878. One of the reasons I like to show this picture is because when we talk about a changing landscape, I think a lot of us tend to think of Boise and the settled areas around us being filled with trees and very lush. As you can 2 see in the late 1870s it wasn’t quite like that. Palmer Jacobs (Cy Jacob’s son) was an early settler of the Kuna region. This photo is about from 1878 and this shot is in the early 1900s. It is interesting to see how the growth of the vegetation and things occurred at that time. Julius Morrow, who was an immigrant on the Oregon Trail, commented on passing through Boise in the fall of 1864. “When we first came in site of Boise City and the valley, we were upon a hill seven miles distant, considerable timber exists along the banks of the river. There were ranches and fields of grain some in shock and some standing ready for reapers. Such scenery to us is beautiful in the extreme, when compared to the hundreds of miles we have traveled over so baring and desolate. This slide, shows Ezra Meeker, he came across the Oregon Trail in the 1850s and later in the century he ended up traveling the Oregon Trail again because he realized the importance of preserving it, since it was a pathway that brought so many immigrants west and of course changed the environment and landscape out here. This is the wagon that he traveled across the Oregon Trail on. He did it three times; he also did it by automobile and airplane. As settlers were coming to the Boise area, of course they settled near the river bottoms where there was abundant water, which was easily accessible and they were able to irrigate their farmlands. This is the Joseph Bown House is southeast Boise. Joseph Bown exemplified some of those early settlers to the Boise valley. Like Jacobs came to the Boise valley in 1860s he was here by 1865. Like many others he first tried his hand at mining. When that didn’t pan out he turned to farming and ranching. He originally homesteaded 160 acres which then grew to 280 acres. His family first lived in a log house and by 1872 he constructed a large two story stone house. I think that the amazing thing about Cy Jacobs is that he poured the stone from the quarry of the Old Pen (Old Penitentiary, off Warm Springs Blvd). To get there he had to make a 12-mile round trip, because there was only one bridge across the river. They lived there until the early 1890s when they then moved up to a location by Cole School and several other families lived there over time. The Bown house is on the property of Riverside Elementary School [of the Boise School District] and in the early 1980s there was talk that the house was going to be demolished and torn down. There were very energetic concerned citizens that got together [Idaho Historic Preservation Council] and were able to save the house and it is now used for local history interpretation; fourth grade students go there where they have wonderful displays and other things in the house. To the east of this property it was all open space, until about two years ago when the area began under development. I took this photo probably about six years ago and this is the changes that we are seeing all over the Treasure Valley. There is a new development there called Bown Crossing, they say it is 3 the new heart of southeast Boise. This is a commercial development that has been planned and they are mimicking the architecture of the house and of course they are keeping the Bown name because it is a very recognizable name now. Settlers came to the Boise valley they acquired land in several different ways. I think this is important for us to know because this helps us understand why people came to settle in the Boise valley.

Load more