Homedale, Idaho: Named from a Hat

The town of Homedale began with a ferry. In eighteen ninety-eight, Jacob Mussell built a boat to carry travelers across the Snake River at a bend in Owyhee County, west of Boise. A community slowly gathered around the crossing.

When the time came to give the settlement a proper name, no one could agree, so residents wrote candidates on slips of paper and drew one from a hat. The name Homedale came out. A railroad branch line reached the town, and irrigation from the Snake River turned the surrounding desert into farmland.

The town incorporated in nineteen twenty. It is a quiet agricultural community today, sitting in a broad river bend in the high desert, carrying a name that was chosen entirely by chance.