Hi! Today's story is by Sharon Fisher. You might recognize her name from stories in Idaho Business Review or Edible Idaho or another publication. Sharon was my editor back when I wrote for IBR, and now in a fun twist of fate, she's written a very interesting story about train service in Boise for today's newsletter. Enjoy! -Marissa

The history & possible future of passenger trains in Boise

Ever since June, when Amtrak first started talking about expanding service, people in Boise have been considering bringing passenger trains back. Though current plans don’t show restarted service in Boise (trains still stop in Sandpoint, Idaho), Montana Senator Jon Tester reportedly added an amendment appropriating $15 million over two years to study the restoration of passenger train service in Pacific Northwest states, including Idaho.

How did Boise get passenger train service in the first place?

For that information, I turned to Eriks Garsvo. In addition to serving as director of the Owyhee County Historical Museum, he’s been giving tours of the Boise Train Depot since 2014 – in a period conductor’s outfit.

At first, the train didn’t come to Boise at all, Garsvo explained. “The Oregon Short Line Railroad was building from Granger, Wyoming toward Oregon, and it would connect in Huntington, Oregon, near Weiser,” he said. The survey crew arrived in Orchard, southeast of Boise, in 1883, to plan the next part of the route. “Either they could divert the main line to Boise, or follow Indian Creek, in front of them, to Kuna, Nampa, and Caldwell.”

Part of the decision had to do with the terrain. “Due to the uphill and downhill grade, it was just easier to continue westwardly along the desert plateau, following Indian Creek,” Garsvo said.

But there was more to the decision than that. “Boise didn’t put out any incentives,” Garsvo explained. As railroads came out, towns would petition them to come to their area, pointing out all the businesses and other opportunities for the railroad to swing through their town. For whatever reason, Boise didn’t do that, he said.

So the line was built in 1883 and 1884, and in 1885 it connected to Huntington. Passengers got off in Kuna and took a two-hour, 15-mile stagecoach ride to Boise. “It was a little wooden platform. That was about it.”

Uproar ensued.

In 1887, Boise finally got its own railroad. A branch line was built from Nampa, through Meridian, ending and what is today the Vista Village shopping plaza, Garsvo said. “They had to take a stagecoach from a batten board depot to Boise, across the river.”

Then in 1894, a new depot was built at 10th and Front, and the rail was pulled up from the Bench neighborhood and repurposed into downtown. The depot was built out of sandstone and had a tower nicknamed the “Prussian war helmet” because of what it resembled.

“Between Front and what would become Myrtle was a railyard of eight tracks,” Garsvo said. “The BoDo area was the freight district. The alleyways had railroad tracks. The Boise Public Library! was a lumber company – the front door and the big windows were freight doors with railroad tracks right up to them.”

At 5th St., the railroad took over what is now Front St. “The street didn’t go that way until the track was out,” Garsvo said. The train went through what is now Municipal Park, the Warm Springs Golf Course, Warm Springs Canyon, and popped out near Barber. When the Arrowrock Dam was being built in the teens, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation ran the train from the Boise River to the Mores Creek confluence with the river, the Mores Junction, now under Lucky Peak Dam, Garsvo said.

At that point, the train line was called the Intermountain Railway, and it ran to Centerville, near Idaho City. “Highway 21, which parallels Mores Creek, and Grimes Creek Road, for the most part, is the old railroad line,” Garsvo said. “It was continuous from Nampa all the way to Boise and Centerville, but it was a dead-end line.” Passengers who wanted to go to Boise would take the main line to the Nampa Depot, which still stands today, and wait for the train to Boise.

“Finally, in the 1920s, Boise got fed up with being a backwater, and wanted main line transcontinental service,” Garsvo said. People wouldn’t visit because they didn’t know how to get to Boise, he said. So in 1924, the city signed a contract with Union Pacific to construct a new station, a line from downtown to the main line, and a new depot. Survey crews junctioned a branch line near Curtis Road and ran it toward Vista but all the way up to where the Boise Airport is now and the Boise Factory Outlets, he said. “They junctioned all the way out to Orchard, and that’s where they met the main line,” he said.

Funds were raised to build the depot and buy right-of-way southeast of town using a fundraiser called “drive your spike,” where supporters could “buy” a spike for the project, Garsvo said.

In August 1924, ground was broken for a new train station, up on the hill, designed by the New York architectural firm of Carrère and Hastings, Shreve and Lamb. “They placed it there because it lined up with the Capitol dome,” Garsvo said. “There was no Capitol Boulevard, nothing but a flood plain, a little dirt road, and a wagon cut. It was out in the middle of nowhere on a hill.” Another possibility could have been at Morris Hill – “a trolley line ran next to it,” Garsvo said – but the architects thought the hill location was a better spot.

But why not downtown? As with the original station, terrain was the culprit. It would have to climb two benches, and that was too steep of a climb, Garsvo said.

The city paid $150,000 for the depot, or $1 million in today’s money, Garsvo said. The brick building, finished April 1, 1925, had a foundation with 150,000 pounds of sandstone and was designed in the Mission style, which was popular at the time, especially due to the building’s location in the desert. “Behind there, there were only a couple of farms, but mostly wide-open desert,” he said.

The grand opening was April 16, 1925, and was quite the affair, with Union Pacific President Carl Gray arriving on the first train.

“When they blew the whistle, the newspaper reported that the crowd almost lost their minds,” Garsvo said. Gray made a speech, received a key to the city, and participated in a 90-minute parade. “Bands played all night long in Julia Davis Park,” he said. “It was a huge to-do. The paper came out with a 48-page edition, and everything, front and back, had something to do with it. Even the ads had locomotive drawings on them.”

Service started with six trains per day, three from each direction: the City of Portland, the Portland Rose, and the Idahoan.

But now the city had to figure out how to get people out of the depot. In 1927, Ricard Espino designed the Platt Garden, and Capitol Blvd. was built. “There was no bridge until 1937,” Garsvo said. “For the longest time, Capitol ended and you had to jog over to 9th St.”

During the time train service existed, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt visited once and President Harry S. Truman visited twice. But as revenue dwindled – especially as the U.S. Post Office moved the Railway Mail Service to airplanes – service dwindled as well. In 1971, Union Pacific, as well as a number of other companies, shut down all passenger service to Idaho, as well as many other places in the United States, Garsvo said.

Then in 1977, with the formation of Amtrak, Pioneer service restarted in Boise with a triweekly train. But in 1997, that too was shut down. Ridership was low, and the train came through Boise at 3 a.m., Garsvo said.

From 1990 through 1993, Morrison-Knudsen restored the depot and added an Amtrak ticket window. But when Morrison Knudsen itself shut down, the depot was handed over to the Boise Parks & Recreation department, and became the event center it is today.

A single freight train still runs through Boise on weekdays, Garsvo said, noting that Scentsy in Meridian has a siding and receives tank cars there.

What would it take to bring passenger service back?

“All the track is intact,” Garsvo said, though some would need to be upgraded or repaired and the ties fixed. But there’s more to restoring service than that. “Where are we putting these people? It’s an event center,” he said. “There’s no bus shuttle. Where are we parking people? A wedding fills up the parking. Even if they got a rubber stamp today, we wouldn’t see it for another four years.”

That said, you can still see the Boise Train Depot today. It hosts free tours at noon and 1:30 pm on the first and third Sundays. The depot also has open houses during its anniversary month in April, and for events such as when a steam locomotive went through in 2017 for the 92nd open house.

Union Pacific’s Big Boy steam locomotive – currently on a run through the Midwest – is working on scheduling a tour next summer through Portland and Sacramento, which could bring it through Boise. “I’m staying in touch with the boss over there,” Garsvo said hopefully.

Thanks for reading!

With love from Boise,

-Sharon

Today's story was written by Sharon Fisher, a digital nomad specializing in history and tourism. Check out her book out about the history of Kuna, Idaho.

PS - here's another interesting story about one of the few train wrecks that happened in the Treasure Valley!