79 Fun Facts About Boise

Legend says a French speaker gave Boise its name by shouting what at the sight of its river valley?

The woods! Legend puts the cry "Les bois!" at an exploring party's first sight of the river's cottonwoods, though evidence is lacking; French-Canadian trappers were already calling the stream the wooded river.

How do most longtime Boise residents pronounce the city's name?

BOY-see, with a soft s, is how locals say it; outsiders, national sportscasters among them, tend to say BOY-zee, so the name works as a shibboleth.

Boise is the county seat of which Idaho county?

Ada County, home to about 27% of Idahoans, has Boise as its seat; confusingly, Boise County is a different, rural mountain county next door.

Which city in Idaho's north was the territory's first capital before the government moved to Boise?

Lewiston lost the capital after gold strikes pulled Idaho's population south; the acting governor carried the territorial seal off to Boise, and the fight went to the territory's supreme court.

What is Boise's long-standing nickname?

City of Trees: settlers irrigated the high-desert townsite and planted orchards and shade trees so eagerly that by 1869 the local paper reported a tree mania, with hotels lining their fronts with young cottonwoods.

Which Native peoples used the Boise Valley as a winter encampment before white settlement?

Shoshone and Bannock bands wintered in the sheltered valley near its hot springs until April 1869, when the U.S. Army rounded them up and marched them to the Fort Hall reservation.

The Idaho State Capitol is the only U.S. statehouse heated by what?

Geothermal water, pumped from 3,000 feet down, heats the Capitol; Boise first drilled for it in 1890, and after one owner tried it in his new Warm Springs Avenue mansion in 1892, a shared heating line for the street followed.

The Idaho State Capitol's sandstone was quarried from which landmark east of downtown Boise?

Table Rock sandstone was cut and hauled by inmates of the Old Idaho Penitentiary, which sat just below the quarry, in blocks weighing as much as ten tons.

The Winged Victory statue in the Idaho State Capitol was a gift to the US from which country?

France sent the plaster Winged Victory on the 1949 Merci Train, boxcars of thank-you gifts delivered to every state; the marble original, unearthed on Samothrace in 1863, stands in the Louvre.

What do the 43 small stars in the Idaho Capitol dome mark?

Idaho's order of statehood: it became the 43rd state on July 3, 1890, so its star went onto the flag the very next day, and that 43-star flag flew for just one year.

Which company built the Boise Depot, the 1925 train station looking down Capitol Boulevard?

Union Pacific opened the depot in 1925, when main-line trains first ran through Boise, and thousands turned out to watch the first transcontinental engine steam in.

The Boise River Greenbelt begins in the east at which dam?

Lucky Peak Dam marks the eastern end of a path that follows both riverbanks west to Eagle; in 1970 a city councilman promoted the young project with film shot from a helicopter.

Boise's Whitewater Park reshapes the river near downtown for kayakers and fans of which other sport?

Surfing: the park's adjustable wave shaper can be reset between a smooth green wave and a churning hole, which keeps a rideable wave in the river through most of the year.

What do the white dots painted along Boise's Greenbelt path tell walkers and cyclists?

Their distance from downtown: a dot sits every tenth of a mile, so NW 0.5 means half a mile west of the 8th Street bridge on the north bank, a spot a caller can pass on in an emergency.

Each summer, the popular six-mile float down the Boise River to Ann Morrison Park begins at which park?

Barber Park is the put-in; before each season opens, the Boise Fire dive team clears hazards from the river so tubers and rafters can drift down to the take-out.

Which Treefort spin-off did President Obama praise during his 2015 visit to Boise?

Hackfort got its shout-out in a speech at Boise State the day after Obama's annual address to Congress; within weeks the year-old tech festival had the Idaho Department of Labor as a partner.

Treefort's late-March timing was partly inspired by bands heading home to the Northwest from which festival?

SXSW in Austin wraps up the week before Treefort, so the founders could book Northwest bands that were already driving home through Boise.

J. R. Simplot sealed a handshake deal in the 1960s to supply frozen french fries to which chain?

McDonald's founder Ray Kroc shook on it because fresh russets ran short every summer; Simplot's chemists had found a way to freeze fries without turning them to mush.

Which company got startup capital from J. R. Simplot's potato fortune in the early 1980s?

Micron Technology was a fledgling start-up when Simplot bought in around 1980; it grew into one of the world's biggest chipmakers and made him a second fortune.

Which animals did the teenage J. R. Simplot fatten on potatoes and wild horse meat for his first big profit?

Hogs were nearly worthless when the young Simplot bought them; he fed them cheaply until prices recovered, sold at a profit and put the money into the potato business.

Bogus Basin, Boise's ski area, likely owes its name to 19th-century swindlers who did what?

Made counterfeit gold dust: crooks hiding out in the hills above Boise in the 1860s are said to have heated lead filings with a pinch of real gold to pass off as the real thing.

What covers the walls of Freak Alley, a service alley between 8th and 9th streets in downtown Boise?

Murals: it began in 2002 when an artist drew on a cafe's back-alley doorway, and it grew into what bills itself as the Northwest's largest open-air mural gallery, repainted by dozens of artists at a time.

Why did Boise State make its turf blue in 1986?

National attention was the aim: the man behind it compared it to painting your house a different colour so the neighbours notice, and the plan stayed secret until it was announced for fear it would be shot down.

Whose idea was it to make Boise State's new artificial turf blue in 1986?

The athletic director, Gene Bleymaier, took the idea straight to the university president, who backed it; when the field was unveiled, critics mocked it as Lake Bleymaier.

Boise State's blue football field is popularly nicknamed what?

Smurf Turf is the nickname outsiders reach for; locals, players and the school itself simply call the field The Blue.

Which league's 2011 ban on any playing surface that isn't green is known as the "Boise rule"?

The NFL voted in 2011 to keep every field green, heading off any club tempted to sell a sponsor a blue, orange or purple surface, though no team had publicly proposed one.

Which La Liga club played a 2015 friendly on real grass laid over Boise State's blue turf?

Athletic Bilbao fields only players with Basque ties, a fitting guest for a city with one of America's largest Basque communities; it beat Mexico's Club Tijuana 2–0 before 21,948 fans.

Boise State's football home went by what name for its first 44 seasons before a 2014 naming-rights deal?

Bronco Stadium was itself a hand-me-down name: an earlier Bronco Stadium opened on campus in 1950, and the present bowl took over the title in 1970 before a grocery chain bought the rights.

Which team did Boise State stun in the Fiesta Bowl to cap its undefeated 2006 season?

Oklahoma fell 43–42 in overtime when Boise State gambled on a Statue of Liberty trick play for two points; minutes later the scorer, Ian Johnson, proposed to Boise State's head cheerleader on live TV.

Which Boise State quarterback went 50–3 as a starter, finishing in 2011 with the most wins in FBS history?

Kellen Moore lost only three games in four seasons, yet no pro team drafted him in 2012; he signed as a free agent, spent six seasons mostly as a backup and later became a head coach in the pros.

Which organisation founded Boise State as a junior college in 1932?

The Episcopal Church ran St. Margaret's, a girls' academy in Boise; as the Depression emptied it, Idaho's bishop turned it into a junior college so local graduates could start college close to home.

Which aviator landed at Booth Field, the old Boise airport where Boise State's campus now stands, on a national tour?

Charles Lindbergh brought the Spirit of St. Louis there months after his Atlantic crossing; when the city moved its airport south in the late 1930s, the junior college took over the gravel field in 1940.

Which airline traces its roots to Varney Air Lines, which began flying airmail through Boise in 1926?

United Airlines counts Walter Varney's Boise-based mail service as its earliest ancestor; Varney later started a second airline that became Continental, and the two merged in 2010.

Which aircraft did the Idaho Air National Guard fly from Boise's Gowen Field in 2024?

A-10 Thunderbolt II jets, the tank-busting Warthogs, had flown from Gowen Field since 1996; in 2023 the Guard said F-16s were expected to replace its 18 A-10s one for one from 2027.

What is the name of Boise's international Basque festival, held only once every five years?

Jaialdi was meant to be a one-off in 1987; Governor Cecil Andrus asked for a repeat for Idaho's 1990 centennial, and it drew such crowds that organisers put it on a five-year cycle.

Boise's sister city is which town in Spain's Basque Country, home of an oak that symbolises Basque liberties?

Gernika is the town whose 1937 bombing Picasso painted as Guernica; the raid levelled much of it, yet the assembly house and the famous oak beside it survived.

Boiseko Ikastola, billed as the only one of its kind outside the Basque Country, is what kind of institution?

A Basque preschool: the Basque Museum set up Boiseko Ikastola as part of its mission to keep the culture alive, and it readies three- to five-year-olds for kindergarten with a curriculum from the Basque Country.

Which former Boise mayor is of Basque descent and speaks the Basque language?

David Bieter spent the 1974–75 school year in the Franco-era Basque Country, where his father had taken Boise State students to study; he later won four terms as mayor, the longest run in the city's history.

Many Basque men who came to Idaho around 1900 found work tending which animals?

Sheep: herding was lonely work that few Americans wanted, and most of the newcomers, who arrived with no English, had tended only a handful of sheep at home, if any.

Boise's memorial next to its main library is the only U.S. memorial dedicated to whom?

Anne Frank: a travelling exhibit about her drew tens of thousands of Idahoans in 1995, which sparked a community drive for a permanent tribute; the memorial opened in 2002 and grows a sapling of her chestnut tree.

Boise's Egyptian Theatre, a 1920s movie palace, took its look from which then-recent discovery?

Tutankhamun's tomb, opened in 1922, set off a wave of Egyptian-themed cinemas; Boise's spent decades under other names before reclaiming its Egyptian title in the late 1970s.

Dennis, the only "inmate" buried inside the walls of the Old Idaho Penitentiary, was what?

A cat: Dennis lived among the inmates and guards from 1952 to 1968, and when he died the prisoners buried him in the main yard under an engraved headstone that visitors still seek out.

What nickname is given to Lyda Southard, the Old Idaho Penitentiary inmate suspected of poisoning four husbands for insurance money?

The Lady Bluebeard was convicted of murdering her fourth husband with arsenic; denied parole after a decade, she escaped in 1931 and stayed free for fifteen months before returning to finish her sentence.

The Old Idaho Penitentiary closed in 1973, months after what?

Inmate riots over living conditions in 1971 and 1973 burned buildings including the chapel; that December the last 416 prisoners were moved to a new prison south of Boise.

Thomas Davis gave Boise part of his riverside orchard for the city's oldest park, named in memory of whom?

His wife had just died, and Davis made her memorial out of the orchard he had planted himself, setting out thousands of fruit trees in 1864, the year after Boise was founded.

Which bird, bred at Boise's World Center for Birds of Prey, came off the US endangered list in 1999?

Peregrine falcon numbers collapsed under the pesticide DDT, vanishing from the eastern United States by the 1960s; The Peregrine Fund, now based in Boise, bred the birds in captivity and released them.

Boise's minor-league hockey team, the Idaho Steelheads, is named after which fish?

Sea-run rainbow trout: steelhead hatch in Idaho streams, spend years feeding in the Pacific and then fight their way back upriver to spawn, a return that makes them a prized catch for local anglers.

How is Bogus Basin, the ski area in the mountains above Boise, owned and run?

As a community non-profit: Bogus Basin is run by a recreation association rather than a resort company, and donations help keep prices down and pay for learn-to-ski scholarships for low-income children.

Boise resident Kristin Armstrong won three straight Olympic gold medals (2008–2016) in which event?

Cycling time trial: Armstrong was a triathlete until osteoarthritis in both hips ended her running at 27, so she turned to the bike as therapy; a riverside Boise park now bears her name.

Which Pulitzer Prize-winning book did Anthony Doerr spend a decade writing in his downtown Boise office?

All the Light We Cannot See began on a 2004 train ride, when a passenger fumed over a dropped phone call and Doerr resolved to write about the miracle of voices crossing distance; it won the 2015 Pulitzer.

Which indie rock band, centred on guitarist Doug Martsch, formed in Boise in 1992?

Built to Spill took its name from a phrase made up during a word game in the Martsch household; he meant to change the lineup for every album, staying on as the only permanent member.

Which John Waters cult film ends with Divine and her family deciding to move to Boise?

Pink Flamingos sends its outlaw family off to Idaho in its closing minutes, yet the 1972 film never left the Baltimore area, where Waters shot it with friends from his home town.

Boise-based Morrison–Knudsen was part of the consortium that built which landmark in the 1930s?

Hoover Dam was a joint venture that Harry Morrison helped pull together; he and Morris Knudsen had met in 1905 on a Boise canal job, where Knudsen turned up with a team of horses and a scraper.

Which grocery giant opened its first store in Boise in 1939?

Albertsons began when Joe Albertson quit a manager's job at Safeway and staked $5,000 of his own plus $7,500 lent by a relative; in 2015 the chain he founded merged with Safeway itself.

What is the name of the public trail network that laces the foothills above Boise?

Ridge to Rivers formed in 1992, when the city, the county and state and federal land agencies pooled their money; many of its trails cross private land whose owners agreed to let the public through.

What do people in Boise mean by "the Bench"?

A raised river terrace: the Bench is named for the sudden step up from the valley floor south of downtown, and the 1925 depot stands on its rim looking down Capitol Boulevard.

Boise had about 235,000 residents at the 2020 census; which Idaho city ranked second?

Meridian, first called Hunter, was renamed for the Boise Meridian, the survey line through town from which Idaho's land is measured; by 2020 it had passed 117,000 residents.

The clothier who led the drive to build Boise's 1896 synagogue later won which statewide office?

Governor: Moses Alexander, twice Boise's mayor, won the office in 1914 on a prohibition platform and took Idaho dry; he is counted the first practising Jew elected to lead an American state.

Which international sporting event did Boise host in February 2009?

Special Olympics World Winter Games came to Boise only after Sarajevo, the original 2009 host, pulled out over money troubles; events were spread across Boise, McCall and Sun Valley.

Boise's 1912 interurban loop linked the capital with which towns?

Nampa and Caldwell: riding the whole loop was a popular Sunday outing, but once cars caught on the traffic dwindled, and the electric service ended in the late 1920s.

Which president's statue in the Idaho Capitol was reputedly carved from one pine tree, using a postage stamp as the model?

George Washington on horseback took the Austrian immigrant Charles Ostner four years, his young son said to have held the candle at night; Idaho Territory paid him $2,500 for it in 1869.

The Idaho Shakespeare Festival shares its acting company with Great Lakes Theater, based in which Ohio city?

Cleveland's Great Lakes Theater and the Boise festival share one resident company of artists, so the same productions play both cities, and a third partner stages them at Lake Tahoe.

Frank Church, the Boise-born senator, gave his name to which kind of Idaho landmark?

A wilderness area: Church was the Senate floor sponsor of the 1964 Wilderness Act, and in 1984, the year he died, Congress added his name to the River of No Return Wilderness he had helped create.

Which Boise neighbourhood, known for tree-lined Harrison Boulevard, was named one of America's 10 Great Neighborhoods in 2008?

The North End slid close to slum status in the decades after World War II; residents and civic leaders organised to turn it around, and the planners' award singled out that activism.

The Boise River is a tributary of which larger river?

The Snake takes in the Boise River at the Oregon border. Each summer, crowds float the stretch through the city on rafts and inner tubes.

What did Forbes name Boise in a 2018 article?

The fastest-growing city in America was Forbes's verdict because the Boise metro led the nation in population growth in 2017 and ranked second for job growth, lifting it from 11th a year earlier.

Which interstate highway serves Boise on its way from Portland, Oregon, into Utah?

I-84 was signed as Interstate 80N until 1980, when it was renumbered to end confusion with the main I-80 that runs on to San Francisco.

What do Boiseans call the short freeway that branches off the interstate into downtown?

The Connector is Idaho's shortest interstate, dedicated in December 1968 because the main freeway bypasses the city centre and commuters needed a way in.

The giant sequoia now standing in Fort Boise Park began as a gift from which naturalist?

John Muir sent sequoia seedlings to an Idaho forester, and a tree raised from them was planted in Boise in 1912. In 2017 movers shifted the 100-foot tree down the street so a hospital could expand.

Which office-supply chain did Boise Cascade buy in 2003 before taking its name a year later?

OfficeMax cost Boise Cascade more than a billion dollars. A year later the timber company sold its mills and forests, kept the stores and renamed itself after the chain it had bought.

Zoo Boise is located inside which of the city's green spaces?

Julia Davis Park has housed the zoo since 1916, when Boise took in a primate that had escaped from a travelling circus.

One account credits which US Army captain's exploration party with giving Boise its name?

B. L. E. Bonneville's party is said to have first seen the river valley from what is now Bonneville Point. Washington Irving later turned the captain's journals into the book The Adventures of Captain Bonneville.

Which Amtrak train stopped at Boise from 1977 until it was discontinued in 1997?

The Pioneer began as a Seattle–Salt Lake City run and later reached Chicago; when it ended, southern Idaho, Wyoming and eastern Oregon lost their last passenger trains.

Through 2024, the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl's tie-ins paired the Mountain West with which conference?

Mid-American teams head west each December for the game, which began in 1997 as the Humanitarian Bowl, named for a sports humanitarian hall of fame in Boise.

Which spring music event in Boise is named for a pianist linked to the city?

Boise is a regional hub for jazz, theatre and indie music, with groups from ComedySportz to the Idaho Shakespeare Festival.

Boise's national interagency centre was founded in 1965 to coordinate the response to what?

Wildfires: federal agencies agreed in 1965 to pool their fire experts in Boise rather than work apart, and the centre now coordinates firefighting crews and aircraft for the whole country.

The Spirit of Boise festival, first held in Ann Morrison Park in 1991, fills the sky with what?

Hot-air balloons: the rally began as part of the Boise River Festival and outlived it, and it still opens with a Kids' Day of short rides in tethered balloons.

The Hudson's Bay Company's Old Fort Boise stood 40 miles west of the city near which town?

Parma is the nearest town to the vanished trading post: a flood wrecked most of it in 1853, the company abandoned it soon after, and the river later swallowed part of the site.

Sandstone buildings from Fort Boise, the 1863 Army post beside which the city grew, are still used by what?

A veterans' hospital, the Boise VA Medical Center, still uses the fort's 1864 sandstone buildings. The Army picked the site on July 4, 1863, to guard the Oregon Trail and roads to the new mining camps.