State Slogan: Tasty Destinations
Nickname: City of Trees
State Flower: Syringa
Motto: Energy Peril Success
Boise is the capital and largest city in the U.S. state of Idaho. Boise was given its name after French-Canadian trappers first explored the area after crossing the arid desert plains. Finding green trees at the site, primarily cottonwoods along the river, they named it boise (meaning "wooded"). Boise has consequently been given the nickname City of Trees. The original Fort Boise was 40 miles west, down the Boise River, near the confluence with the Snake River at the Oregon border. This fort was erected by the Hudson's Bay Company in the 1830s.
It was abandoned in the 1850s, 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 and a major road connecting the Boise Basin (Idaho City) and the Owyhee mining areas, both booming at the time. Idaho City was the largest city in the area, but the new Fort Boise grew rapidly and Boise was incorporated as a city in 1864. |
