By the spring of 1863,
just before the formation of
Fort Boise and well, Boise,
there were about 100 non native people
living in the valley by 19110 years.
After Ohio became a state that population
was above 19,000 and the makeup was
still very rural with more than 1600
farms on more than 113,000 acres of land.
According to the Idaho State
Historical Society,
about 896,000 of those acres were irrigated.
I should say 8096 thousand those acres
I should say we're irrigated thanks to.
The 568 miles of canals and irrigation
ditches that kind of spider webbed
themselves across the valley.
Communities can't grow in more ways
than one without access to water,
and pioneers had to figure out how
to get water from the valley floor
up and out into higher elevations,
like on the bench.
And they did it relatively quickly within
about 3 decades or one generation time,
water and growth all come together to tell
the story of today's get to know Idaho.
You've likely seen or driven on Ustick Road.
It stretches nearly 40 miles from Curtis Rd,
mostly straight to the Snake River
and was once on a timeline to become
its own independent community.
Until time and growth well got in the way.
Water like thyme can
roll by undeterred, only altered, sometimes
by the path in front of it.
A change in direction.
Can change a lot. Water
is what made the treasure valley
productive and livable and led to
communities popping up all over.
If you're in a barren landscape,
the next obvious thing is you
need to find access to water.
In the 1870s, a canal
system began to take shape.
A series of ditches to take river water,
where it wasn't think the New
York Ridenbaugh and settlers,
and by 1891 there were nearly 50
miles of canals that brought Boise
River water as far West as Nampa,
which meant homesteads and
farms sprouting in spots,
South and West of the river,
we have Boise, who you know,
Central Central location,
and we have a town of
Meridian that had had started.
To grow in 1893 and this ustick
property sat kind of in between the two
160 acres claimed by Jacob Clemens in
1894, who filled them with orchards.
Anytime you have a product you have to
have a way to bring that product to market.
Back then, that meant investing in railroads.
And so the Boise Interurban Railway
had a loop that took people and
goods from Boise along State Street.
Collister into a number of points and
then back down along what we consider
Ustick Rd back down into downtown Boise.
One of those investors of the Interurban
Railway was a gentleman named Doctor
Harlan PU stick that's him in the top
hat at the Golden Spike ceremony.
So this is where this name you
stick comes into the picture.
An ear, nose and throat doctor from Ohio.
Ustick also had an eye for business
and he had visions of building a
town so you stick acquired some of.
Simmons Acres and laid out his
plans and the Platts by 1907.
So what we're looking at is the
original plat of the Ustick town site
and people were buying into Ustick idea.
We clearly see the Boise Valley
Railway line following this route.
You got a train track that
runs through. You got water.
Now you got people interested in buying
there. What came next
so he ended up opening a bank and he
served as president of a bank in town.
However, you stick wasn't much of a
banker and it closed. For just three
years, but they were also able
to secure a mercantile store,
and even the orchards found success
in the form of a cider house.
There was a Baptist Church that
opened and built a building.
There was a ustick school,
and it really did operate as
a true individual community,
a community that was cut short,
much like Doctor Eastick himself,
and in 1917 he was visiting some of
his mining interests in yellow pine,
and he died of a heart attack.
After that, nothing could stop the.
Life being squeezed from his town,
you know by 1918.
We're in the middle of of a worldwide
pandemic and we're in the middle of
World War One and things are changing.
And interurban railways are no longer as
critical because automobiles have become
the primary mode of transportation.
Boise is growing, Meridian is growing
and becoming actual cities while you stick.
Tried to stick with its roots
and you stick never elevated to that level
in part because they always were rural.
They always maintained that rural profile.
And they never let that go. Eventually
those orchards became subdivisions.
And eventually the city of Boise annexed
those subdivisions into city limits.
That was in 1995. Nearly 30 years after
you can still see some of what Ustick
envisioned more than 115 years ago,
the original bank building and the original
mercantile building are still standing,
and so are the consequences of change.
Change happens all the time,
but change also leaves bread crumbs.
And if we can take the time to
watch for that change and to
see what has been left behind,
there's always a story that we
can can learn from that. You
know you can see those old buildings
still on you stick West of Five
mile before you get to Cloverdale.
They're right there.
The town of Austin lasted 50 years,
40 years after its founders death,
while the post office shut down in 1958,
the school stopped teaching
kids a year after that.
Residents once tried to get those few
remaining buildings listed on the
National Register of Historic Places,
but only the school was added back in 1982.