Caldwell, Idaho

Caldwell was platted in eighteen eighty-three by the Idaho and Oregon Land Improvement Company, a railroad promotion outfit building a town along its line. The name honored Alexander Caldwell, a Kansas senator who helped finance the venture. Settlers arrived fast: within a decade the town had a college, a newspaper, and an irrigation canal drawing water from the Boise River to turn the high-desert flats into farmland.

Irrigation turned the flats around Caldwell into productive farmland. The historic downtown, anchored by a brick commercial strip, reflects the confident stride of those early irrigation-era boosters who were certain they had found the right spot.