Boise State University ScholarWorks Faculty Authored Books 2015 River by Design: Essays on the Boise River, 1915-2015 Todd Shallat (editor) Boise State University, [email protected] Colleen Brennan (editor) Mike Medberry (editor) The Cabin Roy V. Cuellar Richard Martinez See next page for additional authors Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/fac_books Part of the Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration Commons, and the Public History Commons Recommended Citation Shallat, Todd (editor); Brennan, Colleen (editor); Medberry, Mike (editor); Cuellar, Roy V.; Martinez, Richard; Nelson, Erin; Armstrong, Travis; Copsey, Doug; Spangler, Sheila; Berg, Emily; Gunderson, Dean; and Gosney, Michael, "River by Design: Essays on the Boise River, 1915-2015" (2015). Faculty Authored Books. 451. http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/fac_books/451 River by Design: Essays on the Boise River, 1915-2015 is volume 6 of the Investigate Boise Community Research Series. Authors Todd Shallat (editor), Colleen Brennan (editor), Mike Medberry (editor), Roy V. Cuellar, Richard Martinez, Erin Nelson, Travis Armstrong, Doug Copsey, Sheila Spangler, Emily Berg, Dean Gunderson, and Michael Gosney This book is available at ScholarWorks: http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/fac_books/451 River by Design River River by Design marks 100 years since the Boise River emerged as an engineering sensation with the dedication of Arrowrock Dam. Sequenced like a tour with stops in River by Design Boise, Garden City, Eagle, Caldwell, and 1915-2015 Boise the on River, Essays Parma, these essays collectively search for the politics and cultural values that drive engineering design. “River by Design is an important, thoughtful book. It ows through past and present, wildness and civilization, to urban development issues confronting the new American West.” – SCOT OLIVER, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, IDAHO SMART GROWTH Essays on the Boise River, 1915-2015 Investigate Boise Community Research Series River by Design Essays on the Boise River, 1915-2015 INVESTIGATE BOISE COMMUNITY RESEArcH SEriES BOISE STATE UNIVERSITY VOL. 6 2015 The Investigate Boise Community Research Series publishes fact-based essays of popular scholarship concerning the problems and values that shape metropolitan growth. VOL. 1: Making Livable Places: Transportation, Preservation, and the Limits of Growth (2010) VOL. 2: Growing Closer: Density and Sprawl in the Boise Valley (2011) VOL. 3: Down and Out in Ada County: Coping with the Great Recession, 2008-2012 (2012) VOL. 4: Local, Simple, Fresh: Sustainable Food in the Boise Valley (2013) VOL. 5: Becoming Basque: Ethnic Heritage on Boise’s Grove Street (2014) VOL. 6: River by Design: Essays on the Boise River, 1915-2015 (2015) 2 Todd Shallat and Colleen Brennan, editors Mike Medberry, associate editor Toni Rome, graphic designer Heidi Coon and Nick Canfield, research associates BOISE STATE UNIVERSITY Center for Idaho History and Politics 1910 University Drive – MS 1925 Boise, ID 83725-1925 [email protected] (208) 761-0485 sps.boisestate.edu/publications About the cover: Arrowrock on the Boise River, completed in 1915, shattered construction records as the nation’s first concrete arch gravity dam. In 2015, Arrowrock turns 100 years old amid urban-rural disputes over the health of western rivers and the value of waterfront land. The School of Public Service at Boise State University The school provides placed-based programs and publications that inform and transform public policymaking. ISBN: 978-0-9907363-3-2 2015 3 Dedication The Patricia E. Herman Fund honors the memory of Patricia Elizabeth “Pat” Herman (1960-2014), a native of Salmon, Idaho, and a public servant who cherished the rugged outdoors. The fund supports community-oriented publications via the Center for Idaho History and Politics and the Boise State University Foundation. 4 Contents Introduction .......................................................................6 1 Rain on Snow .....................................................................8 Climate change steepens the challenge of forecasting floods. Roy V. Cuellar 2 Raising Arrowrock .........................................................16 Bigger has always been better for the builders of Arrowrock Dam. Richard Martinez 3 Water, Earth, and Gender ..............................................32 Two great American writers tell parallel stories of conquest. Erin Nelson 4 Float, Paddle, and Surf ...................................................46 River sports make a tourist attraction. Travis Armstrong 5 History along the Greenbelt .........................................62 Relics and storied places connect Boise to frontier past. Doug Copsey, with Todd Shallat 6 The Waterfront District .................................................74 Garden City bridges the river via parks and urban renewal. Sheila Spangler 7 Crowding the Suburban Floodplain ............................90 At Eagle Island, developers build castles on sand. Emily Berg 8 Daylighting Caldwell ......................................................99 Urban renewal transforms an asphalt floodway. Dean Gunderson 9 Draining Dixie ............................................................... 110 An urban-rural alliance is changing the way Boise manages waste. Michael Gosney 10 Wildlife Preservation ................................................... 122 Parks and conservation protect the creatures of the Boise River. Mike Medberry Selected Sources ............................................................ 132 5 Introduction The Great Pyramid of the Boise River—the tallest dam on the face of the Earth, staggering and monumental—overshadowed even the feats of the Pharaohs as an icon of human triumph. So said a man named Moses at the 1915 dedication of Arrowrock Dam. Governor Moses Alexander, Bavarian born, tipped his hat to “the strength of the people” and led the faithful in song. “My Country ’tis of thee,” sang the Bavarian Jew in tune with Idaho farmers. Before them the arching Goliath shot streams of water through cast iron valves. One million tons of concrete. Two hundred sixty rail car loads of sand and Portland cement. Plugging and pooling the granite canyon for 18 slackwater miles, Arrowrock held enough water for 200,000 settlers on 240,000 acres, enough water, said Moses, to redeem the Garden lost to the Fall. This book is about those expectations—about the pyramids we Boiseans build on the Nile of our sagebrush Sahara, about cities and suburbs and other unmovable objects in the path of an invincible force. Our study is also a centennial tribute. Sunday, October 4, 2015, marks 100 years to the day since the epoch of Big Reclamation dawned on Arrowrock Canyon. Plenty in that time has been said about dams as bulwarks of progress; much less about how Idahoans have coped. The time is nigh for a Boise Valley assessment. Why and for whom have we Boiseans crowded the floodplain, and what yet might we do when tested by the climate-change forecast of more extreme droughts and floods? Historically, through a valley of Starbucks and Simplots, the river the French called Boisée has braided with polemical streams. The most familiar is an epic of muscular masculine prowess. “It was a man’s task,” said Boise’s Capitol News of the 5-year plugging of Arrowrock Canyon. Blasted deep and bolted 90 feet below the surface to a bed of batholith granite, the colossus, added the Idaho Statesman, was “strong,” “firm,” and “robust.” The Boise Project Division of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation boasted, in a 1965 pamphlet, a total cumulative yield of $929 million, mostly alfalfa, beets, and apples. Today, with Anderson Ranch and Lucky Peak plus three big dams on the Payette River, the bureau’s Boise Project claims $1.2 billion in annual yield from cattle and crops. Add $13 million from hydroelectricity and $30 million 6 ​A row of cast-iron valves shoot water through Arrowrock Dam. N O TI A M LA C E R OF U REA U U.S. B U.S. and crops. Add $13 million from hydroelectricity and $30 million from slackwater beaches and boating. Add $170 million for allegedly sparing the valley damage from river erosion and floods. But always there are mirages in deserts. The 58-page project history on the bureau’s Boise website says nothing about mechanical failures, leaks, or government bailouts. No mention is made of hellish farm labor conditions on Heartbreak Row, the project’s hard-luck nickname. No mention of the cost to the fish and the Earth. “We set out to tame the rivers,” wrote Marc Reisner in Cadillac Desert (1986). “We set out to make the future of the American West secure; what we really did was make ourselves rich and our descendants insecure.” For richer or poorer, the lifeblood of the Boise Valley still freights a heavy tonnage of hope and fear and scientific conjecture. Our book of essays adds urban-suburban concerns. Chapters descend like a tour from the snow above Idaho City to Boise, Garden City, Eagle, Deer Flat, Caldwell, and the Dixie Drain near Parma. The hundred-mile journey showcases people at work to redeem some lost connection to flood lands. Each stop on the tour interprets a braid of the aquatic and artificial, each a social-political construct, each a pyramid to which all Boiseans contribute a stone. Todd Shallat Boise, Idaho May 2015 7 Rain on Snow 1 Climate change steepens the challenge of forecasting floods. by Roy V. Cuellar September snow had already fallen in the Northern Rockies. A U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA)