Boise, explained
The drive to Horseshoe Bend is a roughly 30-mile run north out of Boise on Idaho State Highway 55, starting on flat valley road through Eagle and ending in a river canyon. It takes under an hour in clear conditions, follows the Payette River for the final stretch, and is the same road used to … Read more
The Payette River is a tributary of the Snake River that drains a large chunk of west-central Idaho, running roughly 130 miles from headwaters near McCall down to its confluence with the Snake west of Boise. It is split into three forks with very different characters, and it is the river most Boise-area rafters and … Read more
Caldwell is a city of roughly 60,000 people in Canyon County, about 30 miles west of Boise along Interstate 84. It grew up as a railroad town in the 1880s, developed into one of Idaho’s agricultural centers, and in the last decade rebuilt its downtown around a creek that had been buried under the streets … Read more
Nampa is a city of roughly 100,000 people in southwestern Idaho, about 20 miles west of Boise along Interstate 84. It is the seat of Canyon County and one of the largest cities in the Treasure Valley. It holds a historic downtown built around a former railroad depot, a private university, a large events arena, … Read more
The Snake River Birds of Prey Conservation Area is a 485,000-acre stretch of canyon and desert grassland southwest of Boise, protected by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) because it holds one of the densest concentrations of nesting raptors in North America. Congress designated it a National Conservation Area in 1993, and its basalt … Read more
Swan Falls Dam is a hydroelectric dam on the Snake River roughly 25 miles southwest of Boise, near the town of Kuna. It generates power for Idaho Power Company, which owns and operates it, and it sits inside the Snake River Canyon at the edge of a federally managed conservation area known for nesting birds … Read more
Celebration Park is Idaho’s only designated archaeological park, a stretch of Snake River canyon near Melba, in Canyon County, roughly 30 miles southwest of Boise. It protects basalt boulders carved with Native American petroglyphs, a historic railroad bridge, and evidence of a prehistoric flood that shaped the land the carvings sit on. What is Celebration … Read more
Bruneau Dunes State Park is a desert state park in southwestern Idaho built around what the Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation describes as the tallest single-structure sand dune in North America, rising roughly 470 feet from the desert floor. The park also contains two small lakes, a campground, and a public observatory, and sits … Read more
Redfish Lake is a glacially carved lake at the base of the Sawtooth Mountains, about four miles south of the town of Stanley, Idaho. It sits inside the Sawtooth National Recreation Area, a unit of the U.S. Forest Service, and is the largest of several alpine lakes strung along the Sawtooth Valley. It is roughly … Read more
The Sawtooth Mountains are a range of granite peaks in central Idaho, roughly 100 miles northeast of Boise as the crow flies and considerably more by road. They are not a single mountain or a park in the strict sense — they are a mountain range, most of it protected inside the Sawtooth National Recreation … Read more
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