Oregon Trail Crossing, Boise Valley
Near Boise, Idaho
A marker here recalls the Oregon Trail, which once ran across this high desert south of the Boise River. From the eighteen forties through the eighteen sixties, tens of thousands of emigrants pushed their wagons west along this corridor, bound for the farmland of Oregon's Willamette Valley. By the time they reached this stretch, they had already crossed much of the continent, and the worn parallel ruts of their passage are still visible across the sagebrush flats in places nearby.
Just to the east, at Bonneville Point, weary travelers caught their first sight of the green Boise River valley after the dry crossing, a welcome promise of water and shade. The name Boise is said to come from a French exclamation, les bois, the woods, called out at that very view, though the origin is uncertain. The trail through here was the thin lifeline of a vast westward migration.
