Where I Grew Up

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I grew up in Boise, Idaho, in the same house from my birth through high school. Boise is the largest city in Idaho, with somewhere between 130,000 people when I can first remember to 160,000 or more when I left. It's one of several cities and towns in the Treasure Valley; there are perhaps 250,000 people in the valley.

Southern Idaho is fairly rural, with mostly farms to the east and farms to the west. The Treasure Valley is maybe halfway rural. There are a lot of little farming towns, but Boise, Meridian, and Eagle are somewhat urban. There's a high-tech corridor, with Micron headquarters in southeast Boise, HP's LaserJet headquarters in western Boise, and several smaller companies scattered in between.

Geographically, Boise, along with most of southern Idaho, is high plains desert. If you drive south of town, near the airport, just south of I-84 (the major freeway), you'll find rolling dunes, sagebrush, snakes, rats, and not much else for miles and miles. If you head north, just out of town, you'll end up in the foothills. (It's not as far out of town as it used to be; there are several subdivisions there. My favorite is Hidden Springs, just over the top of the foothills, nearer the dump than any springs.)

The name Boise comes anecdotally from the French "les bois" (the trees), allegedly what French traders cried when they came across the river valley. If it weren't for the Boise river flowing right through the middle of town, there'd be very little worth settling here for. (I shouldn't say that; people founded Salt Lake City which has as redeeming qualities only nice mountains.)

The town built up around the river. Now, one of Boise's best features is the Greenbelt, a park system along either side of the river. It extends perhaps 20 miles to Lucky Peak Dam to the east of town and west most of the way to the Bench.

What's the Bench? Being a river valley in somewhat hilly country, the town slopes down to the river. To the south and west of the river, there's a gradual rise of 30 feet or so to west Boise. (There's another rise to the north, but no one calls that anything, as far as I know.)

Most of the Bench is suburban. That's where I grew up. There are a couple of main streets flowing east and west: State Street at the farthest south, Chinden (derived from "Chinese Gardens", so you can always tell non-natives as they call it "shinden") a mile north, Fairview two miles north, Franklin a mile north, and Overland a mile north. Fairview and State Street are the busiest streets. Fairview was the busiest street when I grew up.

There are also several major north south streets, almost too many to mention. I grew up near Fairview and Maple Grove, an intersection which once housed a movie theater (with a drive-in screen I could see from my roof with binoculars!) and a small strip mall. Now it hosts two car lots.

My elementary school was two miles east, on Fairview and Cole. Back in the '80s, this was the busiest intersection in the state. Now Franklin and Milwaukee has taken that honor, thanks to the mall built there in 1989 or so. It was too far to walk from my house, but my grandparents lived about a mile away, so on days when Mom worked, my brother and I would cross south on Fairview, east on Cole, and walk three or four blocks east on Fairview, then south to visit Grandma and Grandpa until Mom could pick us up.

Surprisingly, there weren't many accidents there. I only remember one accident involving a student in my years at Cole Elementary. Unfortunately, it was a fatality. (I remember talking about it with the principal, and joking "Now you only have 622 students to worry about." That thought disturbs me now.)

The Boise school district divides its schools into elementary schools (half-day kindergarten through sixth grades), junior high schools (seventh through ninth grades), and high schools (sophomores through seniors). I went to Fairmont for junior high. It's about a mile south from Cole Elementary on Cole road — well within walking distance from home. We walked a half to a third of the time.

I went to Capital High School, which is again, about a mile south of Fairmont. By that point, I had my driver's license and could drive myself and, two years later, when my brother started there, both of us. I think Fairmont was a little newer school, but Capital was nicer. (My father just missed out on going there, but my aunt went.) It has a planetarium, for example, which was great for taking astronomy class first period, when I didn't want to be awake anyway. Lying back in leany chairs in the dark was a good substitute. In the second semester, we started watching Carl Sagan videos and it wasn't as nice.

Boise had a rough economic patch in the '80s. Though I was young, I remember jokes asking the last person to leave downtown to turn off the lights. There was no reason to go downtown, unless you worked in one of a handful of office buildings.

I don't remember exactly when or how the revitalization happened, but several major projects helped attract people back downtown. For example, someone built a decent convention center right in the middle of downtown, with a huge hotel (okay, 10 or 12 stories, huge for Boise) next door and a large open square — the Grove — with a fountain and small shops and restaurants. There are often concerts and shows there during the summer.

Another project that helped downtown was a major road construction project. For years, it was a hassle to drive downtown, as Fairview was really the only straight option for driving west out of downtown. I don't remember exactly how you drove east to downtown, but you could only go halfway on Fairview before you had to merge onto a quick onramp. In the early '90s, the city finished the Broadway Chinden connector. Broadway is the last major north south street to the east in downtown. It starts near the airport in the south and ends at a corner in the north where it turns into or merges near State Street. (I have the rough details right but would have to look at a map to be sure.)

Chinden is the major east west street just north of the bench.

How does the connector work? It's just a partially-raised roadway that starts near Orchard, the road down the bench to Chinden near where you have to turn off of Fairview to drive east to downtown. It drops down to the normal road height near 13th street and continues all the way to Broadway. Going west, you can turn from Broadway on to Front Street, to drive past the new county courthouse and the Idaho Center and convention center, before you merge onto the connector. From there, you can peel off onto Chinden Boulevard, continue to Fairview (if you're really clever), or merge onto I-84 to drive past the mall and eventually out of town.

Though the decision to put stoplights and cross-streets on the connector is questionable (why not keep it elevated all the way to Broadway and make a big loop around the city, as in Salt Lake City?), it has really helped traffic. A trip that took 30 minutes, say my mother's work commute, has dropped to 10 or 15.

I still prefer west Boise though. It's much more familiar. The character of the neighborhoods is much different in north Boise (older), the Foothills (expensive), south Boise (poorer), and west Boise (average suburbs). If you push west further into Eagle or south further, you find still more expensive and newer houses; this is where most of the growth is taking place.

I'll talk more about the neighborhoods and their flavors in my next entry.