Archaeology and Cultural Resources
Historical and Cultural Setting
The Boise National Forest, and the ecosystems it encompasses, is as much a product of cultural history as of natural history. Contemporary land use patterns have important historical antecedents that provide the context for national forest management. Past uses of the ecosystem may encourage, condition, or preclude certain management practices.
The following historical sketch outlines significant periods in the development of the Forest’s landscapes. The overview is by no means inclusive but rather presented to convey general themes and patterns of the relationships between humans and their environments.
The First Inhabitants
Native American Indians were the first known human inhabitants to live in and use the natural resources of what is now central Idaho. Spear points recovered from archaeological sites in the area document the presence of Paleo-Indian peoples in the area as early as 12,000 years ago.
The Boise National Forest is within the traditional subsistence range of the Shoshone, Northern Paiute, and Nez Perce Tribes. Historically, their life ways were seasonal and cyclical. They spent the winter in warmer climates along the lower elevations, and summer and early fall in the mountains, where it was cooler. At different elevations, they harvested different plants, fish and game. Within the Forest area, camas and salmon were critical food sources for the tribes.
For hundreds, if not thousands of years, Native Americans played an active role in Idaho’s environments. Fire was the most powerful tool at their disposal. American Indians deliberately burned forests and meadows for a number of reasons, including forage regeneration and campsite and trail clearing. Fur traders and Oregon Trail emigrants traveling through southern Idaho frequently observed Indian set fires in the mountains north of the Snake River Plain. These fires were set in late summer and early fall as they left for winter camps in lower elevations.
Over time, ecosystems were conditioned to the effects of fires set by Native Americans. The practice was not widespread across the landscape but instead focused on habitats that supported specific food plants. Deliberate burning enhanced camas and berry crops. Seasonal burning fertilized the soil, discouraged the invasion of undesirable species, and prevented forest encroachment into camas meadows. Hand tilling in camas meadows aerated the soil, creating conditions later receptive to Euro-American crops. Fires ignited to keep transportation corridors open spread into the surrounding forest, contributing to the open, park-like stands shown in early photographs of Idaho’s forests.
In the 1870s, stockmen and then settlers converted camas meadows in the Payette River drainage and Camas Prairie into pasture and agricultural fields. Camas crop destruction was a leading cause of the Bannock War and Sheepeater Campaign of 1878-1879, in which settlers and government troops skirmished with Paiute and Shoshone trying to pursue traditional life ways on lands increasingly occupied by miners and homesteaders.
By 1900, most Nez Perce, Shoshone, and Paiute lived on reservations far removed from the mountains of central Idaho. They continue, however, to exercise off-reservation treaty rights such as fishing, hunting, and gathering on what was to become national forest. According to eyewitness accounts, Indians also continued to set fires when leaving the mountains. White settlers and Forest Service regulations for fire suppression eventually discouraged the practice.
New Arrivals and the Fur Trade
Euro-American exploration, settlement, and industry profoundly changed central Idaho’s landscape. Capitalism and a free-market economy introduced social, economic, and environmental changes inextricably associated with the region’s abundance of natural resources.
Shortly after Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery explored the Pacific Northwest in 1805-1806 for the United States, Euro-Americans moved into the region. At the time, Idaho was part of Oregon Country, the ownership of which was disputed between Great Britain and the United States. Until the Oregon Treaty of 1846, when Britain relinquished its claim, the two countries jointly occupied Oregon Country.
The first Euro-Americans to arrive in central Idaho were fur trappers and traders working for British companies in Montreal. The fur trade opened Oregon Country to commerce. It was the first large-scale, corporate enterprise in the region, and the first to market Idaho’s resources in a global economy. The demand for beaver pelts was enormous—the hat-making industry alone required an estimated one hundred thousand pelts to supply European markets. The British quickly gained control of central Idaho. The Hudson’s Bay Company sent its “Snake Brigades” to trap out the Snake River and its tributaries. In 1818, a party of fur trappers for the company named the Payette River in honor of their comrade, the French-Canadian, Francois Payette. He explored the Payette River and its tributary areas.
Though short-lived and on the decline by the 1840s, the fur trade had enormous environmental and social consequences. Hudson’s Bay Company purposefully over trapped beaver, creating “fur deserts” to discourage American competition and settlement. Beaver occupy a special niche in forest environments, and their removal from certain watersheds initiated a host of complex, interconnected changes related to stream morphology, species composition, and disturbance events such as flooding and increased sediment loads.
The fur trade also changed relationships between Indians and Euro-Americans. Native American economies were drawn into new trading relations that transformed the way Indians perceived natural resources. Some tribes increased their hunting of ungulate species or began trapping beaver and other furbearers as commodities exchangeable for European trade goods. As a result, many became dependent on European trade goods, preferring them to traditional cultural goods.
Mining
In 1848, Congress made Oregon Country a United States territory. From 1848 until 1863, what is now Idaho was included at different times in Oregon and Washington territories? Mining was the impetus behind the establishment of Idaho Territory in 1863.
Emigrants and miners on their way to Oregon and California between 1840 and 1860 were unimpressed with the Snake River Plain. Southern Idaho was portrayed as a desert—hot, barren, and inhospitable to settlers and livestock. Although Goodale’s Cutoff took thousands of travelers north into cooler, forested environments, the majority of Oregon Trail emigrants were unwilling to stop short of the Willamette Valley. Miners that were intent on California’s gold fields largely ignored, for the moment, evidence of Idaho’s mineral wealth.
In 1860, gold was discovered in northern Idaho, on a tributary of the Clearwater River. Miners, many of them depression-ridden settlers from Oregon, set out prospecting, and steadily moved south into central Idaho. In 1862, gold was discovered in Boise Basin. A year later, the basin’s population of miners surpassed the population of Portland. Idaho’s mining camps, like those elsewhere in the West, were remarkable for their ethnic diversity. Many of the miners were international immigrants from various European countries and Chinese provinces. By 1870, Chinese comprised thirty percent of Idaho’s population. In Boise Basin alone, nearly half the population was Chinese.
Mining created new demands on central Idaho’s natural resources. The industry required an enormous amount of timber to build and fuel mines. The effect that mining had on timberlands is clearly visible in historic photographs that show mining camps surrounded by cutover slopes. Mining, especially of placer deposits, also depended on vast amounts of controllable water. The industry built the first impoundments and diversions in the state. Mining reconfigured the physical and biological landscape—it moved vast amount amounts of earth, diverted the course of entire streams and rivers, and altered the composition, structure, and function of ecosystems.
Mining has continued to support Idaho’s development throughout the twentieth century. The boom-bust cycle of mining prolonged the existence of mountain communities that otherwise might have become ghost towns. Agribusiness, however, has been Idaho’s chief source of income since statehood. Today, mining’s historical legacy contributes to the visitor’s experience and provides educational and interpretive opportunities for the public.
Settlement
The demand of mining camps for agricultural products eventually encouraged settlement on the Snake River Plain and in forest valleys suitable for cultivation. Whereas settlement was initially a response to mining, goods and services from forest communities also supported regional urban development. In 1890, Idaho Territory became the nation’s forty-third state.
Public land laws prior to the establishment of national forests promoted settlement in the West. The Homestead Act of 1862 and the Timber and Stone Act of 1878 were important in moving public land into private ownership. When national forests were later established, they often incorporated a mosaic of land ownerships with existing land use patterns.
Settlement imposed a new set of values on the use, allocation, and conservation of natural resources. Agriculture on the Snake River Plain could not survive without extensive irrigation development. Reclamation reached deep into central Idaho for the water necessary to support settlement and industry. The Minidoka Project, up and running by 1909, and the Boise Project, which included the construction of Arrowrock Dam in 1915, marked the beginning of extensive engineering projects within National Forests. In many cases, these water conservation measures ensured future water supplies, provided inexpensive electricity, and offered a variety of recreational opportunities. Dams, nevertheless, have also had environmental consequences, the most controversial of which are effects to anadromous fish.
Euro-American perceptions about fire, namely that it destroyed life and property, evolved into government policies and programs for fire suppression. Predators such as grizzly bears and wolves were also considered dangerous and were eradicated from central Idaho. Conversely, Euro-Americans intentionally and unintentionally introduced or encouraged the spread of non-native plants and animals in the ecosystem.
Livestock Grazing
The livestock industry followed the 1860s mining boom into Idaho. Stockmen quickly divided into opposing camps. Prior to 1884, when the Oregon Short Line was built across southern Idaho, stockmen from other western states drove cattle across the territory on their way to stockyards in Cheyenne and Winnemucca. Mountain valleys north of the arid Snake River Plain became popular and highly coveted summer pastures. The range was unregulated, and serious overgrazing occurred, causing resentment among resident Idaho stockmen. Although the livestock industry had a reputation for opposing forest reserves, in Idaho, stockmen often petitioned for the establishment and enlargement of reserves to protect and regulate the range.
Prior to regulation, improved grazing practices, and progress in veterinary science, livestock had more impacts on the Forest. Overgrazing contributed to changes in the distribution and occurrence of native plant communities, erosion, and the amount of forage available to wildlife populations. Livestock can transmit disease, and this transmission played a role in the decline of certain species such as bighorn sheep.
The livestock industry made significant contributions to the development of Idaho’s economy and continues to support the state’s rural communities. In the context of National Forest management, grazing was at one time widely believed to help the agency with fire suppression. Stockmen promoted the industry as a beneficial use of national forests, because cattle and sheep consumed much of the understory vegetation needed for the ignition and spread of fire.
Logging
In 1900, Idaho’s economy received a much-needed boost from a new industry—commercial logging. Prior to that time, sawmills and timber harvesting existed to meet the needs of mining and local settlement. Although independent contractors logged in the mountains of central Idaho, most of the small operators were eventually bought out by new companies with strong ties to Weyerhaeuser, a lumber giant from Illinois. Companies like Boise Payette Lumber purchased vast tracts of state and private lands, built large, sophisticated mills, and established company towns within national forest boundaries.
Early loggers tended to prefer clear-cutting. Lumber companies commonly liquidated the timber and then leased cutover land to stockmen who needed range. Cutover land was rarely rehabilitated. In 1924, Congress passed the Clarke-McNary Act to promote cooperation and incentives between federal, state, and private forestry for the improvement of private timberlands. Clarke-McNary programs focused on fire and tax relief, although there was a strong emphasis on convincing lumbermen to adopt better cutting practices. Over time, cutting practices did change in response to technological innovations, evolutions in silvicultural method and theory, federal laws and regulations, and prevailing public opinion about what constitutes responsible timber harvesting.
The timber industry was responsible for much of central Idaho’s transportation network. When driving logs downriver through steep, rugged canyons proved unprofitable and highly dangerous, the timber industry persuaded Union Pacific to build subsidiary railroads into the Weiser and Payette River drainages to haul timber. The trains also carried passengers and freight, stimulating additional settlement. Although the Great Depression marked the end of the railroad logging era in Idaho, they continue to transport forest products to urban markets. In the late 1920s, Idaho lumber companies became famous for using a “modern” invention—the short bed log truck.
Forest Service Administration
The Forest Reserve Act of 1891 empowered the President of the United States to set aside forest reserves from the public domain. For decades, there had been growing public sentiment to protect what was left of American forests. In 1897, Congress passed the Organic Act, which clarified the purposes for which forest reserves could be established. The act stipulated that reserves could only be set aside to protect and improve the forest, secure favorable conditions of water flows, and to provide a continuous supply of timber for the citizens of the United States. In 1905, the Forest Service was established to administer forest reserves.
The Boise National Forest was created from the portions of the original Sawtooth, Payette, and Weiser Forest Reserves. In 1905, President Roosevelt established the reserves to protect the timber and watershed values of central Idaho from unregulated grazing and logging. Forest reserves, however, were unpopular in the West. In 1907, western congressmen endorsed a law prohibiting the enlargement of forest reserves in Idaho except by an act of Congress.
The most immediate impact of the new agency was regulation of occupancy and use of forest reserves. Settlement on national forest lands was prohibited until the Forest Homestead Act of 1906 allowed entry to those lands deemed suitable for agriculture. Mining was also regulated.
The Forest Service quickly implemented grazing permits and allotments. Dividing the range between resident and non-resident stockmen, and between cattlemen and sheepmen, was a controversial process. Overgrazing was brought under control, though it escalated again during World War I, when Chicago packers, attempting to boost meat production, loaned money to western stockmen to increase their herds. The result was a rush on national forests for pasture.
The Forest Service also developed policies for timber protection. Foresters worked closely with local communities and industry to implement fire prevention regulations and procedures. In 1908, the Payette National Forest Supervisor, Guy B. Mains, and Boise Payette Lumber Company’s land agent, Harry Shellworth, formed the Southern Idaho Timber Protection Association. Known as SITPA, the alliance became a model for cooperative forestry, influencing the Weeks Law of 1911 and the Clarke-McNary Act of 1924.
The Forest Service established a network of fire lookouts through central Idaho, many of them built by the Civilian Conservation Corp (CCC) during the Depression. These structures, some of which are still in use, are historic properties eligible for inclusion in the National Register of Historic Places. They contribute to our understanding of Forest Service administrative history and CCC contributions to the conservation of the nation’s natural resources in the 1930s.
The Forest Service sold timber from agency land, but only under certain conditions. National forest policy, prior to World War II, focused on supplementing, only when necessary, timber supplies from private land. The Forest Service also sold timber to meet local requirements, giving preference, when possible, to small, independent contractors. Disease and insect infestations were also occasions for a timber sale. After the war, however, private timberlands could not supply the nation’s demand for lumber, and the Forest Service began selling more timber. That, combined with truck logging and technological advances in logging equipment, promoted road building and harvesting in steeper environments.
Recreation
One of the most obvious changes that occurred in twentieth century was the rise of recreation on public lands. A boom in outdoor recreation during the 1950s, related to post-World War II increases in disposable income and leisure time, created an interest in natural environments and their aesthetic qualities.
Modern recreation, however, does have historical antecedents. Early national forest maps distributed to the public advertised scenic and recreational opportunities. In the 1930s, the Forest Service responded to the rise in recreation created in large part by the automobile. The agency began to approve special use permits for recreational residences and resorts and employed the CCC to build public campgrounds.
The rise of recreation on national forests after World War II marks a departure point for federal agency management of public lands. Natural resources, though they retain their importance as commodities important to American society, are also prized for their non-market values. As a result, the Forest Service serves increasingly diverse publics. Today, the Boise National Forest manages the land as much for its wilderness and scenic integrity, biological diversity, recreational opportunities, and water and air quality, as it does for traditional uses.