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.
