Tales of the Trail
Arabella Clemons Fulton in "Tales of the Trail"
September 25, 1864
.. An early morning start enables us to make it across the Boise River where we camped for the night.
The next morning we broke camp, traveled down the river five or six miles, and crossed on a ferry boat. Many others of our party kept on down the south side of the river until they reached a place they could ford it. The water at that time was very low, but even at that there was some danger to be incurred in crossing, for the river was wide and swift. This risk was taken principally because of the low financial condition of the train, and of our reluctance to part with our United States currency at the exorbitant discount in vogue here. This, and the absolute refusal of the settlers to accept our shinplaster, worked a hardship on all of us.
Our reason for crossing on the ferry was to see the little town of Boise, which was just starting up. The men also wanted to verify some of the reports they had heard about the mines.
The town of Boise was a little motley collection of log cabins, tents, and dugouts. There were perhaps two or three rude frame buildings not very symmetrical in appearance, for axes and saws had been the principal tools used in their construction. The timber came from a little sawmill up in the Bannock Mountains. The mill had been brought in with great difficulty on pack horses, over trails too steep for wagons. Timber however, was a necessity for making sluice boxes and flumes for washing the gold from the mines. Bringing the lumber from the mill to town was also very difficult. I believe only three houses in town were built of lumber, these being the main eating houses, dignified by the name "hotel," one small store, and a very pretentious saloon and dance hall.
Crude and primitive as it then was, I little thought it the embryo of one of the prettiest and finest little cities I have ever seen in all my travels, as it appeared to me in 1927, when it was my good fortune to spend a week with some of its hospitable people, after an absence of fifty years.
At the time of my visit to Boise in 1927, sixty-three years had elapsed since I first saw the little town on September 25, 1864. My pen cannot adequately describe the changes wrought in building up and beautifying the city. Green velvety lawns, beautiful flowers, well-laid parks, lovely homes, fine business edifices, lakes and bathing pools, parks containing wild animals, linking it to olden times, schools, churches, and other improvements too numerous to mention, now bespeak the civic pride of her citizenry — how different the Boise I first knew!
Could the veil have been lifted to our travel-strained eyes on that September morning in 1864; could we have been permitted to glimpse the future glory of the then motley little town, the vision to us in this desert land would have been like John's on the Isle of Patmos when he "saw the great city, the holy Jerusalem, descending out of heaven from God."
The building up and beautifying of Boise represent to a great extent the inher- ited pride of the younger generation, for alas! I found only one person — an old lady — who was my fellow-traveler on that memorable journey, still living here, although quite a number of my own train stopped here and became residents of Boise.
writing about their first farm about 15 miles west of Boise In 1864.
"Bedbugs are natural in this country," the man replied. "You can find them out here in the sagebrush sometimes, and they live in certain kinds of pine trees, around the limbs and knots. If you bring timber or lumber from the mountains, you are sure to get bedbugs. We old-timers always sleep out of doors in summer to avoid them."
That explained it! We later examined some of the framing timbers and planks Frank had hauled down to make grain bins, and surely enough we found bedbugs. The discovery relieved me greatly, but it didn't lessen their number. You may imagine how bad they were when I tell you that their fame spread clear to New York! I happened to get a New York paper containing an article on the West, in which the writer referred to the bedbug situation thusly: "In Idaho the natives sleep on their roofs in order to give the bedbugs more room in the house." He was correct about their sleeping on the roofs, but wrong in his deduction as to their reason for so doing. Most of the houses had rather flat roofs covered with earth, and in summer many used them for sleeping pur- roofs covered with earth, and in summer many used them for sleeping purposes. They made convenient open-air bedrooms.
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