Nampa, Idaho: Railroad Town on the High Desert
Near Boise, Idaho
Nampa, Idaho, exists because of a railroad and water. The Oregon Short Line drove its tracks across the Snake River Plain in eighteen eighty-three, and a station appeared here on land so dry that farming seemed impossible. Then the Boise Project, one of the earliest federal irrigation schemes under the Reclamation Act of nineteen oh two, brought water from the Boise River through hundreds of miles of canals. The desert turned green almost immediately.
By the nineteen tens, Nampa was the largest city in Idaho. Sugar beets, dairy, and seed crops replaced the sagebrush. The town never lost its railroad character, and the ornate Union Pacific depot built in nineteen oh three still stands in the center of downtown. Today Nampa is the third-largest city in Idaho with roughly one hundred thousand people, a manufacturing and distribution hub for the Treasure Valley, still anchored to the same flat plain the railroad crossed in the eighteen eighties.
