BOISE BASIN MINING DISTRICT

In August of 1862, a party of prospectors from Florence discovered gold in what is known as the Boise Basin, an area roughly twenty miles square, located some thirty miles north of the current city of Boise.

The gold was rich enough -- $200 per day per man -- that the news started the Northwest's largest gold rush!

They came by the thousands, to Pioneer City (originally called Hog 'em) and Idaho City (then known as Bannock City), to Placerville and Centerville and Granite Creek.

When President Abraham Lincoln established Idaho Territory in 1863, the Boise Basin was the center of the population, more than 15,00 strong. And Idaho City was the center of the Boise Basin. In fact, Idaho City was the largest town in the Pacific Northwest, larger even than Portland, Oregon.

Gold was the basis of everything in the Basin. Miners worked round the clock in three shifts, trying to beat the day when the water would run out.

In Idaho City, thirty-three whiskey shops lined the town's 1 ¼ mile principal street. In fact, whiskey was sometimes cheaper than water, since water was essential for placer mining.

But the town also had a veneer of culture that gave it a fun loving atmosphere, with opera and theatre houses, bowling alleys, music stores, tailor shops, and twenty three law offices.

The avenging angel visited Idaho City not once, but twice. In May of 1865, most of the town and almost all of the three hundred business establishments burned. Two years and one day later, the town was once again left a smoking ruin.

But, unlike many Idaho ghost towns, Idaho City refused to die. Merchants built brick buildings, with clay from nearby Elk Creek. They filled the attics with dirt and fastened metal shutters to the doors and windows, all attempts at permanence in a boom town setting.

Today, Idaho City's residents work and play in the shadow of nationally historic landmarks, like the current Boise Basin museum, built in 1867 as a post office; the former Miners Exchange Saloon, which now houses county offices; and the Boise County Court House, one of the state's most important historic buildings.