BOISE

I've peppered hints throughout my blog about where I live. Those hints were a disguise: If you followed them correctly, you were lead to believe that I live on Easter Island. This is false. I live in Boise, Idaho, USA! and the purpose of this post is to inform you of our wonderful history. Sit back and relax, because you're in for a story. Even better, you can print this blog out on a sheet of paper and enjoy it near your favorite reading area.

Boise all started with one magic word: WEST. Somebody, somewhere, said to the nation: "Young man, go west." And the nation listened. That nation, my friends, was called the U.S. of A. (We dropped the "of" after World War One.) At the uttering of these four magic words, the members of the fraternity of the Eastern States began to filter out towards the Western Territories. Needless to say, the stranglehold that the Freemasons had over our government was shattered. Americans were tempted by the ways of the "Wild West", where lawlessness abounded; or as

they say in Hollywood, a popular destination in the West, "Anything goes!

(Editor's note: This goes on for another twelve paragraphs before I even mention the word "Idaho"; not that that's a bad thing; but, I've decided that for the purposes of this blog, it would be best not to publish the full version. I'll skip ahead a bit to the introduction of Idaho.)

One thing that's often left out in the history of the Donner party, however, is the story of the two secret survivors, Don and Donna Donner, who set out towards an unnamed space of land in between Oregon and Wyoming Territories. They were the first ones to set foot in this space, and thus they earned the legal right to name it. This beautiful new land was named "Idaho", after their daughter Ida (who had been eaten). They first settled in the Northeast corner of Idaho, just somewhere in that general area, and had many children. Let's say eleven children. Their children grew up, the Donners died, and the children changed their last names to various names; thus, much like the Tower of Babel split the peoples of the world into different languages so they could not understand each other, the Donners changed their names so that they could not stand each other. This is why there so many different last names in Idaho to this day. The Donners each moved to eleven different locations and founded eleven different towns; the biggest of which became Boise.

At first, Boise was seen as a useless, unarable location. The first settlers there tried and tried, to no avail, to grow wheat in Boise. The problem was that the surface was covered in volcanic rock for miles in every direction. Growing wheat on this land was hopeless; for even grass would not grow on these rocks.

Then came the town's namesake: Nathaniel Boise. He discovered that the ground under these rocks was superb for farming. All it took to get to the soil was a little old-fashioned hard work. Well, there's nothing Americans love more than hard work, as long as there's gold involved. So Nathaniel told people there was gold just sitting on the ground--that the streets were paved on it. Thus, the creation of a popular myth, and the beginning of the Gold Rush. Boise was a classic case of an 1850's boom town. The population exploded to about 500 heads, as people dug up the volcanic rocks looking for gold. The rocks were shipped out to Eastern Idaho, where they can still be seen at Idaho's beautiful volcanic monuments. Of course, no gold was found. But the 49er's and what have you weren't NEARLY as stupid as history likes to portray them. They settled down in Boise and began farming.

It didn't take long for the farmers to quickly leach the soil of all its nutrients. Many starved; most people just left. It was then that Boiseans discovered their trump card: The Potato! (Pronounced "po-tah-to" in those times.) The potato was delicious and could grow anywhere. For that reason, people flocked to Boise. The population quickly increased to 200,000 over a period of a hundred and fifty years or so. People planted trees everywhere, even though water was scarce; this earned Boise the nickname "City of Tree-Planting Fools", which was soon shortened by the city's inhabitants to "City of Trees". A more appropriate moniker might be "City of Lawn", for in the 20th century, Boiseans discovered that despite their water situation, they really enjoyed lawncare. At any rate, Boise gained its identity as an incredibly inefficiently green city.

Boiseans are proud of their history. They (and all Idahoans) eat potatoes not just because they are tasty, but to celebrate Idaho and its past. Not a lot of famous people come from Boise, but its music, film, and beer scenes are vibrant in a contained, intrastate, anonymous kind of way.

I'm proud of Boise, and I'm proud of Idaho, and I hope this story helps you understand why. I realize it's kind of a top-heavy story, and that it goes on and on about settlers and other nonsense before finally briefly touching on the actual place called Boise, but I reckon it did its job.