Boise, the Treasure Valley & the Owyhees
Newe homeland the capital was built on — Boise's Old Pen and Basque Block, the Owyhee canyonlands and Silver City, the raptor cliffs of the Snake, and the Oregon Trail's Three Island Crossing.
The Boise Valley was a gathering place long before it was a capital. Shoshone, Bannock and Northern Paiute people came each autumn for the salmon runs, wintered along the river, and used the hot springs and buried their dead in the hills under Table Rock. In 1864 the territorial governor signed a treaty with the Boise Shoshone ceding the valley and left the price blank, for someone in Washington to fill in. No one did, and the Senate never ratified it. In March 1869 the Army marched the people who remained east to the Fort Hall Reservation. The city's own histories now describe Boise as standing on unceded land, and each year descendants gather for the Return of the Boise Valley People.
Boise began in 1863 beside an Army post, as the supply town for the Boise Basin gold camps, and took the capital from Lewiston the next year. The sandstone walls of the Old Idaho Penitentiary still stand at the edge of the foothills, and the Basque Block downtown keeps the memory of the families who came from the Basque Country to herd sheep across southwest Idaho.
South of the Snake the Owyhee country opens out, rimrock canyons and sage running all the way to Nevada. Silver City, a silver camp of the 1860s, still stands at the top of its dirt road, and the Shoshone-Paiute Tribes hold the Duck Valley Reservation astride the state line. Along the river, the Morley Nelson Snake River Birds of Prey National Conservation Area protects basalt cliffs where some eight hundred pairs of hawks, eagles, falcons and owls nest each spring — the greatest concentration of nesting raptors in North America. Upstream at Glenns Ferry, Oregon Trail emigrants reached Three Island Crossing, where wagons forded to the north bank or kept to the drier, harder road on the south.
What to See in Boise, the Treasure Valley & the Owyhees
6 places across the region, grouped by what they are.
Geology & Rock Formations
Natural Areas
Historic Sites
Towns & Gateways
Architecture
Scenic Drives through Boise, the Treasure Valley & the Owyhees
Stories from Boise, the Treasure Valley & the Owyhees
Boise, the Treasure Valley & the Owyhees rewards the unhurried. Pick a base, fan out, and let the country between the headline stops surprise you.
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