Boise Afternoon
by Jon Burch Photography
Title
Boise Afternoon
Artist
Jon Burch Photography
Medium
Photograph - Digital Capture/digital Painting
Description
A view along the Boise river on a warm September afternoon. Boise is the capital of Idaho in the United States. Located on the Boise River in southwestern Idaho, the population of Idaho's capital at the 2010 Census was 205,671, the 99th largest in the nation. Its estimated population in 2013 was 214,237.
The Boise-Nampa metropolitan area, also known as the Treasure Valley, includes five counties with a combined population of 664,422 people. It contains the state's three largest cities; Boise, Nampa, and Meridian. Boise is the third most populous metropolitan area in the United States' Pacific Northwest region, behind Seattle and Portland.
Accounts differ about the origin of the name. One account credits Capt. B.L.E. Bonneville of the U.S. Army as its source. After trekking for weeks through dry and rough terrain, his exploration party reached an overlook with a view of the Boise River Valley. The place where they stood is called Bonneville Point, located on the Oregon Trail east of the city. According to the story, a French-speaking guide, overwhelmed by the sight of the verdant river, yelled "Les bois! Les bois!" ("The wood! The wood!") and the name stuck.
The name may instead derive from earlier mountain men, who named the river that flows through it. In the 1820's, French Canadian fur trappers set trap lines in the vicinity. Set in a high-desert area, the tree-lined valley of the Boise River became a distinct landmark, an oasis dominated by cottonwood trees. They called this "La rivi're bois'e", which means "the wooded river."
The area was called Boise long before the establishment of Fort Boise by the federal government. The original Fort Boise was 40 miles west, near Parma, down the Boise River near its confluence with the Snake River at the Oregon border. This private sector defense was erected by the Hudson's Bay Company in the 1830's. It was abandoned in the 1850's, but massacres along the Oregon Trail prompted the U.S. Army to re-establish a fort in the area in 1863 during the U.S. Civil War.
The new location was selected because it was near the intersection of the Oregon Trail with a major road connecting the Boise Basin (Idaho City) and the Owyhee (Silver City) mining areas, both of which were booming. During the mid-1860's, Idaho City was the largest city in the Northwest, and as a staging area, Fort Boise grew rapidly; Boise was incorporated as a city 152 years ago in 1863. The first capital of the Idaho Territory was Lewiston in north central Idaho, which in 1863 was the largest community, exceeding the populations of Olympia and Seattle, Washington Territory and Portland, Oregon combined. The original territory was larger than Texas. But following the creation of Montana Territory, Boise was made the territorial capital of a much reduced Idaho in a controversial decision which overturned a district court ruling by a one-vote majority in the territorial supreme court along geographic lines in 1866. - Wikki
Some digital effects were added to the original image after the photograph was made. No electrons were harmed during the transition...
Image copyright 2016 Jon Burch Photography all rights reserved.
Uploaded
December 20th, 2015
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