Rick Just's Blog, page 91

Bridges gone Bad (Tap to read)

The Idaho Transportation Department has released thousands of digitized photos from their files for the public’s enjoyment. In looking at the database recently, I decided to pull together a little series of bridges gone bad. This is an old bridge at Cataldo, circa 1910. It shows the distorted trusses and the temporary  braces put in place to stave off a complete collapse. It’s doubtful there is any remnant of this old bridge today.
This is the collapse of the Parma Bridge. It looks to me like it was probably 1950s, by the way the men are dressed.
Some of the photos are more recent. This is an overpass across I-84 near Burley after a truck crashed into a support in 1988.
Perhaps the most dramatic bridge collapse in the ITD files is this one, which caught a Union Pacific Bus as it tried to cross. This may have been a bridge across the Bear River. Does anyone have any information about this incident?

The Adavenger (tap to read)

The War Department cooked up many creative ways to sell war bonds during WWII. In 1942 citizens of Ada County were given the chance to name a B-17 Flying Fortress, which would be the designated Ada County bomber.
 
The contest to name the bomber got good play in the Idaho Statesman. The rules were simple: The name had to be 24 characters or fewer and it had to be associated with Ada County.
 
More than 1,000 people entered the contest for a chance to win a $25 war bond. The proposed names ranged from the obvious to the ridiculous. Esto Perpetua was what Mrs. Merle Green of Caldwell proposed. Cruis-Ada (as in, crusader) was a cute play on words. Someone suggested Syringa, the state flower.  Arrowrock Whizz Bang was one entry. Playing up the war bond theme Mrs. Lulu Johnson of Meridian entered the name Ada’s Victory Bondadier.
 
Several entries honored William E. Borah and C.G. “Kiddo” Phillips, the owner of KIDO radio who had recently passed away.
 
The winning name was Adavenger. Six people came up with that one, so someone drew the name out of a fishbowl at a war bond event at the Boise Victory Center. Maurine Busath was the first one picked, so she got the war bond.
 
A few weeks later the paper ran a picture of the B-17 with Adavenger painted just behind the machine gun turret in the nose. The Adavenger was one of 12,731 B-17 aircraft produced by Boeing in Seattle for the effort.
 
The War Department promised to send news to Ada County about the bomber’s activities “unless military censorship prevents.”
 
In September, the Statesman reported that the Flying Fortress was “off to bomb Berlin.” The airplane was never mentioned again in the pages of the newspaper.   ​A B-17 Flying Fortress like this one carried the name Adavenger when it was deployed to England for the war effort. A reporter in Seattle commenting on its defensive firepower when the model was introduced said, “It’s a flying fortress.” The name stuck. Photo by Airwolfhound - commons file, CC BY-SA 2.0,  https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index...

USS Boise (tap to read)

If you’ve paid even passing attention to World War II history, you’re familiar with General Douglas MacArthur’s famous promise after his escape from the Philippines, “I shall return.” What you may have missed is exactly how it was he kept that promise. He went back on his flagship, the U.S.S. Boise. 

The Boise, commissioned in 1938, happened to be in the Philippines when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. The light cruiser was in the thick of it from the beginning. The ship assisted in the first attack on the island of Japan by sailing around to the south among smaller islands sending out confusing radio transmissions while Lieutenant Colonel James Doolittle’s airmen carried out the Doolittle Raid, also known as the Tokyo Raid. 

A few months later the Boise participated in the Battle of Guadalcanal, taking a hit from a Japanese heavy cruiser just minutes into the battle. That cost the U.S. 140 men. But the Boise wasn’t down. She limped to the Philadelphia shipyard for repairs.

In 1943 the U.S.S. Boise found itself in a different theater of war at the Battle of Gela in the invasion of Sicily. She participated in further battles for Sicily and for Italy in August and September of 1943.  

As the war ended in Europe the Boise was part of the convoys bringing soldiers back to the United States.

Then, the ship returned to the Philippines in triumph as the flagship for General Douglas MacArthur from June 3-15 during his promised return.

The U.S.S. Boise was decommissioned in 1946 and eventually scrapped.

I would be remiss if I failed to mention that there is another U.S.S. Boise sailing today. The Los Angeles-class nuclear attack submarine USS Boise (SSN-764) was launched in 1991 and is still in active service.

On the Basis of Sex (tap to read)

The 2018 movie, On the Basis of Sex , is about Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and how a famous court case about equal rights set the tone for her career. She wasn’t on the Supreme Court at that time. It was 1971. She was arguing for the rights of Sally Reed, a woman who was challenging an Idaho law.

Reed, from Boise, had been divorced from her husband for some time when the couple’s son committed suicide. The son left a small estate—less than $500 and a record collection. Sally Reed and her ex-husband each filed a petition with the probate court to administer that estate. Idaho law was very clear on how that should be decided. When both parties were equally qualified in such a matter, “the male must be preferred over the female.” The judge ruled in favor of Mr. Reed.

The sum was small, but the principle was large. Boise attorney Allen Derr agreed to represent Mrs. Reed. By the time the case worked its way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, Idaho had changed its statutes eliminating preferences for males, but that didn’t make a decision less important.

While Derr argued the case, Ruth Bader Ginsburg was the principle author of the brief that went before the Supreme Court. The decision was unanimous in favor of Sally Reed. It was a landmark case, the first where gender discrimination was declared unconstitutional because it denies equal protection.
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Reed and the famous decision are memorialized at the site of her former home on the corner of W. Vista Ave. and Dorian St in Boise.
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Elvina Moulton (tap to read)

Elvina Moulton crossed the plains on the Oregon Trail with the family of a judge headed to California in 1867. She walked most of the way—sometimes barefoot—so by the time she got to Boise she was tired. She decided to stay. She got a job working in a laundry and saved enough money to buy a house next door to Boise Mayor—and later Idaho governor—James H. Hawley. Moulton also worked as a housekeeper, a seamstress, and a nurse. She was a quiet community member known affectionately as “Aunt Viny.” She helped found the First Presbyterian Church in Boise.
 
All of that might have gone unnoticed, but Moulton was a former slave, born in Kentucky in September 1837. She may have been Boise’s first resident African American woman.
 
When asked on her 88th birthday what her rules for long life were, (Idaho Statesman, September 17, 1916) she replied, “Well I never married, so nothing to worry about. I rested when my work was done and I went to church regularly. I guess this was the reason.”
 
Moulton regularly attended church and always put a silver dollar in the collection plate. Even so, she specified in her will that she didn’t “want to be buried from the church when I go. You see, I am the only colored member, and while everyone in the church has been good to me, I think it would be better to be buried from the undertaker’s, for there might be some feeling, you know.”
 
Moulton died at the age of 89 in 1917. She is buried in Morris Hill Cemetery. Elvina Moulton was honored in 2019 by the Daughters of the American Revolution with a historical marker and plaque at the Idaho Black History Museum.
Elvina Moulton illustration by Keri Just.

Nixon in Boise (tap to read)

On September 13, 1960, the lead headline on the front page of the Idaho Statesman read, “Nixon to Make Major Address at BJC Tonight.” Yes, it was that Nixon. He was campaigning for president, running against John F. Kennedy. Nixon’s speech was about reclamation, power, and flood control. Idaho was selected for the location of the campaign speech because the state had much interest in the topics.
 
The speech was preceded by a bit of drama. The vice president’s airplane had one engine conk out shortly after it took off from Portland. The Boise Fire Department was on hand at the Boise Airport in case of trouble. Nixon shook hands with pilot Perry Thomas after the plane rolled to a stop and told him he had done “a darn good job.” Nixon insisted he wasn’t nervous about it, because there were three working engines on the plane and because it was the sixth time it had happened on a flight since he had become vice president. The plane made it to Boise about ten minutes early, even with one bum engine.
 
About 1,500 people came to see Richard Nixon at the airport, and about 5,000 lined the streets along the motorcade route to the Hotel Boise. That night’s speech was heard by about 4200 people, a near-capacity crowd at the Boise Junior College Auditorium.
 
Airplane troubles plagued another plane in the Nixon entourage when Nixon flew out on September 14. His plane was working fine, but about half of the 55 journalists accompanying the candidate had to wait four hours because their airplane had developed a leak in its hydraulic system. A substitute plane flew in from Seattle to pick them up and take them to Peoria, Illinois where Nixon was headed next.
President Richard Nixon at the Boise Airport in 1960.

Idaho's First White Settler (Tap to read)

The name Idaho may not yet have been invented in 1840 when William Craig became the first permanent settler within the bounds of what would become the 43rd state.
 
Born in Virginia in 1807, Craig was about 18 when he joined a group of trappers associated with the American Fur Company. In 1836 he and two other trappers established the Fort Davy Crockett trading post in what is now Colorado. When the fur trade there started to wane, he went west with his frontiersmen friends Joe Meek and Robert Newell. Those men ended up in the Willamette Valley of Oregon, but Craig, who had fallen in love with a Nez Perce woman, decided to settle in her homeland near present day Lapwai.
 
His Nimiipuu wife was called Pahtissah by her family, but Craig called her Isabel. The mission of Henry and Eliza Spalding was not far away. The Spaldings had established their mission in 1836, so theirs counts as the first white home in Idaho, but they left in 1847 after their missionary friends, Marcus and Narcissa Whitman were killed by Cayuse Indians at their mission near Walla Walla.
 
Spalding didn’t care much for Craig, but did value his ability to communicate with the Nez Perce. The Spaldings found the Craig home a handy refuge when they decided to abandon their mission.
 
Craig’s reputation for good relations with the natives served him well. He was an Indian agent to the Nez Perce and served the same role for a time at Fort Boise.
 
When the Nez Perce negotiated the treaty of 1848, they honored their friend by giving him 640 acres inside their new reservation.
 
Craig was not only the first permanent settler, but he was credited with coming up with the name of what would become Idaho. A lot of people have been credited with that, and it is widely disputed. In this case, it was frontiersman, poet, and newspaper editor Joaquin Miller who claimed William Craig knew it as the Indian word “E-dah-Hoe,” meaning “the light on the line of the mountains” In 1861.
 
William Craig died in 1869 and is buried near his home in the Jacques Spur Cemetery, also called the Craig Cemetery. Craig Mountain Plateau, between the Snake, Salmon, and Clearwater rivers is named in his honor.

Idaho's Famous Flying Beavers (tap to read)

I ran across the picture below at a new display at the Idaho State Archives on outdoor recreation in Idaho. The photo shows an interpretive display about the Idaho Department of Fish and Game’s parachuting beaver project that started in 1948. This program became a YouTube sensation a few years ago when someone found an old newsreel-like film about the flying beavers. It was a hit because the project sounds a little goofy, and the narrator is, well, a 1940s narrator. You have to hear it to appreciate it.
 
The sign in the photo is probably too small in this reproduction to read, but it says that more than 600 beaver would be dropped that year and that 50 had already been dropped in the Chamberlain Basin, northeast of McCall and in the Lochsa-Selway area.
 
The crates, each containing one 80-100 pound beaver, were dropped in pairs, one male, one female, so that courtship could begin soon after the wooden containers opened on impact. Using cargo chutes, which would later be retrieved by employees hiking into the back country, the beaver boxes were dropped from about 600 feet.
 
This might seem a silly effort, but it was successful in getting more beavers into areas where they were needed. Yes, needed. Tens of thousands of beavers were taken for their fur in the 19th century, and trapping continues today on a smaller scale. The rodents can change the character of an area faster than anything, save fire. They create terrific habitat for dozens of species.
 
Beavers rarely fly, the previous example being the exception. They are the largest rodent in North America and the second largest in the world, edged out by South America’s capybara.

Ezra Meeker (tap to read)

To say that Ezra Meeker was a unique character in Western history is like saying Puyallup is a common name. Why that comparison? Meeker was the first mayor of Puyallup, Washington.
 
He was also one of the first to grow hops in the Puyallup Valley and soon earned the nickname “Hop King of the World.” He even wrote a book called Hop Culture in the United States. The “King” fell faster than he rose. At one point he was the wealthiest man in Washington Territory, but hop aphids and the panic of 1893 brought him down. He spent a few years selling dried vegetables in the Klondike, then returned to the town he platted from land he owned, Puyallup.
 
Meeker ran unsuccessfully for a couple of offices and started the Washington State Historical Society.
 
But this is a blog about Idaho, so you know there’s more to Meeker’s story.
 
Ezra Meeker had always been proud of his pioneer roots, especially the fact that he had come to Oregon Territory via the Oregon Trail in 1852. At age 71 (some sources say 75), he set out to do something he had long thought about. He wanted to travel the trail again, this time west to east. Again, he would travel in an ox-drawn wagon, not to venture to a new territory but to commemorate the trip thousands had made along the Oregon Trail. It was his intention to raise money and interest in placing monuments along the fast disappearing trail so that it would not be lost to history.
 
His slow journey east, in 1906, garnered more and more publicity as he plodded along. In Boise, Meeker told stories of the trail and convinced 1200 school children to donate their change to raise $100 for a granite monument with a brass plaque to be placed on the grounds of the capitol where it still stands today.
 
By the time Meeker and his schooner arrived in Montpelier, he had raised money along the way and erected 15 Oregon Trail monuments. The Montpelier Commercial Club began raising money to make it 16.
 
Eventually Meeker made it to his original jumping off point on the Oregon Trail, Eddyville, Iowa. He travelled on, selling postcards and other merchandise as he went to finance the journey, eventually ending up in New York City, where he took his ox team and wagon on a six-hour-drive the length of Manhattan. Later he would travel to Washington, DC, where he met with President Theodore Roosevelt. The president gave his support to the idea of establishing a cross-country highway, a dream of Meeker’s.
 
In 1910, Meeker took to the Oregon Trail again, this time not to raise money for monuments, but to locate and mark the fading trail. That trip ended in Denver when a flood damaged many of Meeker’s possessions.
 
In 1916 Meeker, now 85, headed out on the trail again, this time in a Pathfinder automobile. The company built a special body for the car, making it look a bit like an old covered wagon. Using the car gave him a chance to pitch the idea of a cross-country highway to more people, as well as telling the story of the Oregon Trail.
 
Meeker had one more trip in him. In 1924 he talked the Army into letting him fly across country with one of their pilots. He went again to Washington, DC to talk with the president about his favorite subjects. This time it was President Calvin Coolidge he met. That same year—Meeker was 95—he ran for the Washington House of Representatives, but was defeated in the Republican Primary by 35 votes.

Charles Ostner (tap to read)

Charles Ostner, who was born in Austria, immigrated to America to escape persecution in Germany. He had been involved in student uprisings there in 1848. He lived in California for about ten years working as a prospector. In 1860 the allure of gold brought him to the Florence Mining District in what would become Idaho. He found easy wealth a difficult thing to come by. On his way to Fabulous Florence, he got lost in the wilderness, spending nearly a month thrashing around. When found, Ostner was unconscious and emaciated. Life as a prospector had lost its allure.
 
Ostner bought an interest in a pack trail bridge in Garden Valley. The toll bridge was a reliable source of income. It gave him some time to pursue his art.
 
Horses were often the centerpiece of Ostner’s paintings (see Bear’s Attack below). In 1865 he felled a large pine at his Garden Valley homestead and set out to make a grand gesture for the recently formed Idaho Territory.
 
Ostner had some patience. It took him four years to carve the wooden statue of George Washington astride a horse that stands on the fourth floor of the Idaho statehouse today. Ostner modeled the statue in snow before committing it to pine. He studied the likeness of George Washington on a postage stamp to get the face right.
 
Ostner donated the statue to the Territory of Idaho in 1869. The Legislature granted him $2,500 for the work. It stood outside the statehouse on a pedestal for 65 years, before it was brought inside and gilded. For years the horse and rider were parked outside of the attorney general’s office, giving the secretary behind those glass doors an unobstructed view of the tail end of a golden horse. The statue was moved to the fourth floor during the 2007 renovation of the building.
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Ostener died in 1913 and is buried in Morris Hill Cemetery in Boise. Monument to Ostner erected on the site of his Garden Valley home in celebration of the country’s bicentennial in 1976. Undated portrait of Charles Ostner, courtesy of the Idaho State Historical Society’s physical photo collection. Black and white copy of an oil painting of Ostner’s called Bear’s Attack, circa 1865. The original is in the ISHS archives. Courtesy of the Idaho State Historical Society’s physical photo collection. A crowd gathered on February 21, 1915 for “Washington-Lincoln patriotic services” in front of the Washington statue carved by Charles Ostner. The woman in the center of the photo is Mrs. Charles Ostner. To the right of Mrs. Ostner is Mrs. R.C. Adelman (nee Julia Ostner). Mrs. J.D. Jones is to the left of Mrs. Ostner. The girl dressed in white and placing a wreath is Clare Elizabeth Jones, the Ostner’s granddaughter. Courtesy of the Idaho State Historical Society’s physical photo collection.
The gilded statue of Washington astride his horse as it appears today on the fourth floor of the statehouse.