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• 1 media/First Depot_1887_ISA 76-138-34.jpg 2020-01-20T17:41:33-08:00 Railroad Towns 44 Turn of the Century plain 2022-11-22T08:01:35-08:00 09/05/1887 Late Frontier

  Boise Depot and the Ridenbaugh Mansion

  In the 1880s the Union Pacific Railroad Company opted to build a more level route for it’s mainline than a Boise stop would warrant. Instead of descending into the Boise Valley, the railroad chose a route that bypassed the city entirely, in favor of running its tracks atop the Snake River Plain through Nampa and Caldwell, making Kuna the closest main line passenger stop to Idaho's capital city. The Kuna stop, entirely without a population, a location picked off the map, was nearly twenty miles away, and the commercial interests of this city were devastated by the decision that left them disconnected from the greater freighting efficiency of the iron horse.  

  Passengers were also not impressed by the travel distance required of the Kuna Station from Boise City; it certainly made an impression on self-described Victorian Gentlewoman, Mary Hallock Foote in 1883, whose first hand description so eloquently illustrates the isolation of the desert stop:

  “No one remembers Kuna. It was a place where silence closed about you after the bustle of the train, where a soft, dry wind from great distances hummed through the telegraph wires and a stage road went out of sight in one direction and a new railroad track in another; but that wind had magic in it. It came across immense dry areas without an object to harp upon except the man-made wires.”  
  The very first Boise Depot was a simple board and batten structure established at the end of the tracks on the first bench, in 1887. The South Boise Subdivision was situated on the rim just above the Mills. The Stub, as it was known locally, was not a mainline connection to the Union Pacific, but a spike that ran between the Boise and the mainline connection in Nampa. Ridenbaugh helped finance the first Depot along with some of Boise's most celebrated businessmen, Peter Sonna, and Frank A. Nourse, in order to facilitate their commercial transportation interests. Though the approach to the depot was not very popular, it was also just one mile away from the city, as opposed to 20, and the arrival of the railroad engines was widely celebrated.
  
  “The long hoped for railroad has reached Boise City [. . .] On Sunday the road from town to the depot was lined with people nearly all day. This distance is about a mile, and the more fortunate ones rode in carriages, others in lumber wagons, and others on horseback, while hundreds of men, women and children walked over. It is safe to say that 1000 visited the railroad Sunday.” ( “First rail car to Boise,” Idaho Daily Statesman, July 9 and 28, 1887 )
  In 1893, in order to meet the passenger needs of the growing metropolis, and preserve the commercial powerhouse of the city center, a new stone depot was built at 10th and Front Streets in downtown Boise, which had closer access to the commercial and hospitality districts. Idaho achieved statehood in 1890, and by the end of the century we can see the slow transition of some old west landscapes. Already the railroad had replaced the wagon roads, and soon the toll roads would be replaced by road improvement bureaus.
  
  The Morris Canal represents a legacy of important Old West industries such as stage and freight, lumber and wheat mills. The Ridenbaugh Canal represents just one of Boise’s Progressive Era transformations in which Ridenbaugh had a part; not only was he party to those responsible for the very first Idaho Central Railroad line on the bench, but he also used his mill pond to generate hydro-electric power for Boise’s first street lights with the the Idaho Oregon Electric Light & Power Co. (1886), and the Capital Electric Light, Motor & Gas Co., and he was a partner in the Ridenbaugh-Rossi Lumber Co., which supported all the major building developments from celebrated architects and real estate magnates such as Tourtellotte and Hummel and W.E. Pierce. Ridenbaugh also served on the board of the historic Artesian Hot and Cold Water Co., which developed Boise's geothermal network, the first of its kind in the nation.  He paid for telephone poles to be installed through the entire 9th Street Pike, in exchange for the convenience of telephone service at the Mills. And the Ridenbaughs even contributed in the local production of food, as the couple paid the water bill for what was known as the China Gardens, on the river bottoms just below the Bench, between where Ann Morrison Park and Chinden Blvd (short for Chinese Garden) are today, and W.H. even introduced quail and pheasant into the local ecology. 

  All over America, the urban landscape was being transformed by a growing industrial presence, and the countryside was coming to be viewed as an escape from these busy, dirty, urban landscapes, and by the early 20th Century real estate developers began offering up the idyllic countryside setting on the Boise Bench.

  
  The residence at the Mills. Left, home built by Morris, in 1871 (Idaho State Archives 76-138.12). Right, home built by Ridenbaugh, in 1890 (Idaho State Archives 70-169.7)
  
  We can see this transition visually, by comparing the Morris Mill home to the Ridenbaugh Mansion that was built in 1890.  By this point, public appreciation for the pastoral views from the mills and the bench had grown. The growing number of small farms and orchards were accommodated and encouraged along the Hillcrest Line of the Interurban Trolley, which ran south on Roosevelt from Irving and Orchard, and then east, descending the rim at Chamberlain Street towards Broadway. The residential landscape along Kootenai exhibits a slow but steady transition of the Bench from rural and agricultural outskirt to mid century metropolitan suburb, perfectly illustrating the familiar process of American suburbanization in what was once considered a frontier wasteland.  
  
  © Angie K. Davis 2020

  Return to Timeline 1870-1900

  Points of Interest: Township 2 North Range 3 West | Morristown | Morris Hill Cemetery | Boise Depot | Appendices