Search Results for: wild love preserve
The Story behind a Preserve for Central Idaho’s Wild Horses Story and photos by Andrea Maki It happened in a split second. He felt the subtle release of his lead rope and was off. They screamed for me
I have to admit, I hadn’t much considered Wilder. Located on US Highway 95 and Idaho Highway 19, about fourteen miles west of Caldwell and forty miles west of Boise, one could breeze right through Wilder and not think twice. A store and post office, some modest houses, a lonely railroad track cutting across the main street. Out of curiosity, I read up on the place and found, as with every town in Idaho that’s examined closely, a myriad of stories.
In 1904 a group of settlers decided to put down roots there, and often had to haul water from the Snake River to their homesteads. They were making a go of it, and investors began rubbing their hands together over the area, thinking they’d take the railroad from Butte, Montana through Idaho, and then clear to San Francisco. Expecting a boomtown future, people talked big, and the group of financiers unofficially dubbed the place “Golden Gate.” Settlers liked the name so much, they named a school, a Baptist church, a store, and their irrigation and canal district after it.
And Golden Gate it would have remained, had it not been for Marshall P. Wilder, the enterprising editor of a widely-read women’s magazine called The Delineator, who bargained with an official to name the town after him in exchange for a favorable write-up. (For one short month, the town was known as “Wilderia,” but that got nixed for what might seem like obvious reasons.) The community didn’t exactly love the new handle, thinking Golden Gate sounded much better.
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When my father, Richard Olsen, was a high school senior in 1954, he discovered what he would later name “Idaho’s Mammoth Cave” while hunting bobcats in the desert outside of Shoshone.
At the time, he was with his high school girlfriend, and stumbled across the entrance by accident. Forgotten over time, it had previously been known only by ancient tribes and early white settlers who utilized the cave for shelter and storage.
“I talked my girlfriend Vinita into exploring the cavern with just a single flashlight. As my excitement and imagination grew, expecting to find treasure at any moment. Vinita, scared and unhappy, cried the whole way in and the whole way out.”
But for my father, it was love at first sight and he decided he wanted to share it with the world.
When you’re driving through southern Idaho on Highway 75, you’ll see the sign for “Idaho’s Mammoth Cave” in big colorful letters, seven miles north of Shoshone. If you take the time to drive the dusty mile off the highway, you’ll discover what a diamond in the rough awaits you and the rich history it holds.
I grew up in the desert that claims the Mammoth Cave. It is a place where ancient lava flows scar the land, and harsh winter winds and snow provide nourishment for exploding wildflowers and lush sagebrush.
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Is She Still There? Story and Photos by Mike Medberry Inside the Hemingway House in Ketchum, I stared past my guide Kelley at a wisp of hair, a body, and a face that peeked out from a corner.
Shuttered along the Byway By Kathy Corgatelli NeVille The 140-mile Peaks to Craters Scenic Byway passes through the bare black Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve, goes past Idaho’s highest summit, the snowcapped Mount Borah, and
Diary of a COVID Refugee Story and Photos by Larry Cohen As soon as I got to the top of Dollar Mountain, the smaller ski hill at Sun Valley, I ran into a family of mule deer led
In Pursuit of the Rainbow Stallion By John M. Larsen I never saw my father in a worse state of frustration than when he rode into our base camp in a cloud of desert dust on his horse
On the Road to All Things Good Story and Photos by Amy Story At a Toastmaster’s meeting in Nampa back in 2012, I met Mary Novotny, a delightful speaker who took an interest in me.“Let’s sit in the
A Signal to Celebrate By Will Roth Photos by Linda M. Swope I didn’t see the sandhill crane but I heard it. I was floating on the Teton River, dumbstruck by the natural beauty around me. I still
