Ordinance Text
8-13D-9-7: HISTORICAL OVERVIEW:
A History of Dry Creek Valley, 1860s to 1940s: The south fork of Dry Creek flows into a valley about a half (1/2) mile wide and two (2) miles long. Cottonwoods dot the creek bed and sage-covered sandstone hills surround the green valley floor. The Dry Creek area includes the region east from present day Highway 55, to Stewart Gulch and north from Hill Road to the Boise County line.
Boise Basin gold discoveries in 1863 brought hundreds of miners pouring into the region. Miners from played out Oregon and California gold camps came through Payette Valley, Horseshoe Bend, and by the new city of Boise, which was platted that year. It was situated next to the U.S. Army fort site selected by Major Pinckney Lugenbeel at the crossroads of the Oregon Trail and the road to the Boise Basin gold mines. Idaho Territory was established that year, with Boise named as its capital in 1864. Idaho first included what is now Montana and almost all of Wyoming. With the creation of Montana Territory in 1864 and Wyoming Territory in 1868, Idaho received its permanent boundaries. (1)
Boise became the major distribution site for Basin mining supplies and fresh produce. Many miners found it more profitable to make a living by raising livestock and some vegetables to sell to their counterparts and local soldiers, rather than mining the elusive gold. Small communities appeared throughout the Boise Basin as new settlers made their homes along creeks and rivers. There they could easily raise stock and crops and had ready access to local markets.
The Dry Creek Valley was one such community. It was centrally located near roads leading to the Boise Basin mines and the Boise Army barracks. An 1863 branch of the Oregon Trail passed nearby. Dry Creek's location, natural pastureland and rich soil made it a desirable setting. The creek and natural springs provided plentiful water for the stock and crops. For a short time in Dry Creek Valley, a stage station and stone hotel served travelers on their way to Boise Basin. (2)
Homestead records and deeds document eight land claims in Dry Creek Valley by 1864. One of the earliest settlers was P. L. Schick, who homesteaded what is now the Hidden Springs property in late 1864 with George Banker. They started out with five (5) horses, one wagon, one plow, and a harrow. Eventually Schick bought out Banker's interest in the property. Schick's assets, listed in the 1890 Ada County Assessor's records, show a man of substantial means:
Money on deposit | $700.00 |
2 vehicles | 75.00 |
harness | 25.00 |
55 stock horses | 1,100.00 |
3 cows | 60.00 |
7 cattle | 84.00 |
7 hogs | 20.00 (3) |
Schick and his family raised stock and farmed in the area until at least 1907. Transportation networks in the region developed rapidly. In 1869 Alexander Rossi and A. H. Robie built a toll road from their Shafer Creek lumber mill, located near present-day Horseshoe Bend. The road ran to mining areas near Sinker Creek in Owyhee County. The road continued to make Dry Creek Valley a thoroughfare for many people. Rossi and Robie's mill supplied building materials for Boise, Silver City, and other mining communities. The toll rates were two dollars fifty cents ($2.50) for one wagon and a span of horses or cattle and fifty cents ($0.50) for each additional span. (4)
Rossi and Robie ran the toll road until 1881, when Thomas Healy was granted a license to maintain the road "...from the crossing of Dry Creek to what is known as the Rossi Mill at Shafer Creek." (5) Healy typified many settlers of the Boise Valley. He first tried his hand at prospecting in Silver City and Atlanta. When that venture was not successful, he moved to Boise and formed a partnership with Frank Bailey to buy the Rossi sawmill. He maintained and ran the toll road until he sold it to Boise County in 1907. It was first called the Rossi Toll Road and eventually became known as Healy Toll Road. Toll rates dropped by 1884 to fifty cents ($0.50) for one wagon and a span of horses or cattle, with each additional stock or wagon an additional twenty-five cents ($0.25). A single horse or vehicle costs twenty-five cents ($0.25). Rates stayed at the same price until the toll road was sold. Thomas Healy remained in the Dry Creek Valley until his death in 1925. (6)
By 1873, the area residents were raising and marketing hay and oats for the local Boise market. One local farmer threshed ninety-six (96) bushels of oats, grown on one acre of land. By the winter of 1873 hay was selling for thirty-five dollars ($35.00) to forty dollars ($40.00) a ton, so it became more profitable for Dry Creek Valley farmers to raise hay than grain. (7) The newspapers also mentioned the potential of farming in Dry Creek Valley. They described the Hidden Springs property, which was now a farm under the ownership of A.J. Wyatt, in detail.His farm comprises one hundred sixty (160) acres, about one hundred forty (140) acres lying on the west side of the creek, all in one field, with the exception of five acres adjoining his house, fenced in for orchard and garden purposes. His house is on the same side of the creek, with a running spring and milk house nearby, and another small house where a tenant or hired men may occupy. The creek runs fifteen or twenty inches of water the driest time of the year, formed from springs at the source and along the banks, which increases it to two or three times the amount during the fore part of the season. (8) From this land Mr. Wyatt was able to produce one hundred eighty (180) tons of hay planted on seventy-five to eighty (75-80) acres. Local markets remained strong for hay and oat crops. Some farmers started planting fruit orchards, consisting mainly of peaches and apricots. (9) By 1873, Dry Creek Valley had enough families with children to support a school. In 1878 the school housed twenty-nine (29) children between the ages of five (5) and twenty one (21). The valley's early population supported a second school by 1918, the Stack Rock school. The Stack Rock community consisted of ten (10) families located north of Dry Creek Valley. At one time nineteen (19) students attended the Stack Rock School. (10)
Both schools served as the cores of community social life. Unlike other small agricultural settlements, Dry Creek Valley did not support a store or a church. Social exchange occurred through shared farming tasks, visiting neighbors and school activities.Dry Creek Valley agriculturists practiced dry farming supplemented by readily available water. Farmers used ditches from the creek to irrigate their crops. Other farmers took advantage of local artesian wells. Although the Dry Creek Valley residents did experience some drought years, they managed to make a basic living from dry farming. Large-scale irrigation never occurred in Dry Creek Valley. An 1889 newspaper account discusses the need for irrigation:
On Dry Creek, the difficulty is more serious, as there is really but little water flowing in the creek this season, and the greater portion of it is absorbed by the sand before it reaches the farms to be supplied. This state of things proves the necessity of some arrangement by which the waters of the streams could be held in reservoirs and distributed as needed. (11)
Dry Creek Valley continued to support stockmen and farmers through the turn of the century. Census records from 1870 to 1920 indicate that the majority of Dry Creek residents made a living by growing oats, barley and grain. They also raised horses, cattle, hogs and turkeys. Fruit production flourished until the 1930s. Peaches, prunes and cherries were successfully grown throughout the valley. The 1910 census indicated that farming remained the main occupation of almost all Dry Creek Valley family members. (12)
Basque Influence: A small knot of Basque families began to make Dry Creek Valley their home by 1910. Basques began immigrating to California in the 1860s from Spain. By the late 1870s many Basque men had worked their way north to Nevada, Oregon and Idaho working as herders for the expanding sheep industry. Some Basques eventually purchased their own farms and ranches. They offered jobs, homes and moral support to other Basques coming into the country. The Echeverria family exemplified this pattern. Pedro Echeverria arrived in the United States in 1900. In 1910 he owned property in Dry Creek Valley. Family members and other Basques worked as laborers on his farm. Yladio Echanove came to the U.S. in 1911 and was listed on the 1920 census as a boarder with the Echeverria family. Eventually the Echanove family bought the Echeverria property. Members of the Echanove family currently live in Dry Creek Valley. (13)
After 1900, local newspapers seldom mentioned the Dry Creek area beyond notices of births, deaths, and club meetings. Dry Creek Valley's heyday had ended. When the 1860s' mining boom ended, transportation routes changed and Dry Creek Valley was no longer centrally located. Only Boise City remained as the main market for local farmers. Dryland wheat production boomed in other southern Idaho communities from 1910 to 1923, but Dry Creek Valley farmers never participated in any large-scale crop production. The area also lay outside lands included in the federally funded Boise Irrigation Project, which promoted intensive cultivation of row crops. Dryland farmers had to compete with the increased production and higher quality of irrigated hay and grain. Aggressive promotion of irrigated lands and new communities caused settlement to shift to the river valley floor, rather than up in the drier hills. There were still families who eked out a living in Dry Creek Valley, continuing to farm small acreages and raise horses and cattle. (14)
A long-term agricultural depression and the onset of the Great Depression made life difficult for most Dry Creek farmer stockmen. Several families moved away. Some older students dropped out of school and worked to help their parents and siblings. The number of Dry Creek Valley school students was cut in half during the 1930s, and its population never grew again. Natural disasters also threatened Dry Creek Valley during the 1930s, particularly range fires and insect invasions. The community pulled together to fend off these disasters. When the cheat grass-covered hills turned into flames, local farmers used their field plows to create fire breaks around everyone's property. The "Mormon Cricket" invasion of the late 1930s swept through the area, but Dry Creek Valley crops escaped relatively unscathed. Anastasio Ostolasa remembered farm families beating on pots and pans to scare away the ravenous crickets. (15)
"Gentleman Farmers:" "Gentleman farmers" from Boise also bought some Dry Creek Valley farms for country living or for increased acreage. Fred Parsons, who bought the former Schick property and adjacent acreages in the 1930s, was a retired cashier from Pacific National Bank. His wife Anna Moore came from the well-known Christopher Moore family, president of Idaho First National Bank. Parsons dabbled in agriculture and livestock and hired the Ostalosa family to oversee the operation of his Dry Creek Valley farm. Constantino Ostolasa had previously worked at the nearby Spring Valley Ranch. The Parsons lived on their Dry Creek Valley property and soon made improvements to it. A young Anastasio Ostolasa helped his father Constantino plant locust trees, which still shade the lane and dwellings. In the 1940s Parsons sold his Dry Creek Valley holdings to Jack Dechambeau of Eagle, who used it to supplement his rangeland and feed. Anastasio Ostolasa brought his war bride from Oregon to the farm and worked for the Dechambeaus. He continued to live on the property until his recent death in August 1996. His sisters and wife continue to live on the property. (16)
The Second World War and increased agricultural mechanization took its toll on the Dry Creek Valley population. America's involvement in the war took many people out of rural communities to contribute to the war effort. The war had broadened the world for many farm boys and girls and introduced them to other ways of life and people.
With tractors and harvesters, it took fewer family members and hired hands to operate a farm. Dry Creek Valley farmers' small acreages could barely compete with larger corporate operations. Both local schools were closed by the 1940s, and students rode the bus to Boise schools.
While many people left rural communities like Dry Creek Valley, still others returned to continue an agricultural lifestyle. Today there are still relatives of early Dry Creek Valley homesteaders who make a portion of their living from the land, despite continuing ups and downs in the agricultural business. More recent landowners moved there to simply enjoy the rural setting, within relatively easy access to the amenities of city life. The Dry Creek Valley remains a quiet oasis in Southwestern Idaho's sagebrush hills.
End Notes:
(1) "The Idaho-Montana Boundary Legend," Idaho State Historical Society (hereafter ISHS) Reference Series, No. 156. Revised January 1966.
(2) "Local Brevities," Idaho Tri-Weekly Statesman, 20 September 1873, p. 3.
(3) Assessment Rolls, Ada County, Idaho, 1890, p. 239. On microfilm at the ISHS, Boise.
(4) Idaho Tri-Weekly Statesman, 23 October 1869, p. 3.
(5) Ada County Commission Records, 1881, Book A, p. 141-142. On microfilm at the ISHS, Boise.
(6) The Idaho Statesman, 1925. See also The Idaho World, February 1907, p. 6.
(7) See the Idaho Tri-Weekly Statesman, 9 September 1873, p. 3; see also 3 January 1874, p. 3.
(8) "A. J. Wyatt's Farm," Ibid., 20 September 1873.
(9) Ibid., p. 3.
(10) Ibid., 21 June 1878, p. 3. See also The Edith S. Hayes Collection, MS 492, ISHS Archives, Boise; Dorothy Stiff Wyman, Light Upon the Mountain (Bend, Oregon: Maverick Publications, 1989), p. 19; and field notes of conversation with Anastasio Ostolasa, 13 July 1994, in authors' personal files.
(11) See the following article in "Fifty Years in the Statesman," Idaho Daily Statesman, 3 September 1939, p. 8: "Water Supply cause of Row", (September 1889).
(12) U.S. Bureau of the Census, Thirteenth Census of the United States, 1910 Population, (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1913), p. 282.
(13) Information of Echeverria & Echanove in the "Fourteenth Census of the United States, 1920 Population," on microfilm at the ISHS.
(14) See several issues of the Idaho Daily Statesman, 1910, for the changing emphasis to irrigated farming and the introduction of dryland wheat.
(15) For descriptions of the Depression, fires and crickets near Stack Rock, see Dorothy Stiff Wyman's Light Upon the Mountain, p. 76. For descriptions of the same in the Dry Creek Valley, see field notes of conversation with Anastasio Ostalosa.
(16) For information on Frank Parsons and his holdings on Dry Creek, see Metzker Map of Ada County, 1936, on file at the ISHS; James H. Hawley, History of Idaho, Vol. II (Chicago: Clarke Publishing Company, 1920), pp. 248-249; see also field notes of conversation with Anastasio Ostalosa.
(Ord. 1002, 10-28-2025)
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8-13D-9-2: OBJECTIVES AND POLICIES:8-13D-9-3: POPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT TRENDS:8-13D-9-4: POPULATION PROJECTIONS:8-13D-9-5: EXISTING CONDITIONS OVERVIEW:8-13D-9-6: VICINITY MAP:8-13D-9-7: HISTORICAL OVERVIEW:8-13D-9-8: SLOPES:8-13D-9-9: ASPECT/VIEWS/CLIMATE:8-13D-9-10: GEOLOGIC OVERVIEW:8-13D-9-11: SOIL CONDITIONS:8-13D-9-12: SURFACE WATER HYDROLOGY:8-13D-9-13: GROUND WATER:8-13D-9-14: GEOTECHNICAL CHARACTERIZATION:8-13D-9-15: VEGETATION:8-13D-9-16: WILDLIFE RESOURCES:
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