Wilder, Idaho: Named by a Magazine Editor

Wilder, in the farmland west of Nampa, carries a name with an unusual origin. When the settlement was taking shape after homesteaders arrived in nineteen oh four to irrigate the sagebrush flats along the Boise Project canals, residents needed to pick a name for their new community. They struck a deal with Marshall P.

Wilder, a magazine editor: he would write a favorable article about the new town if they named it after him. They agreed. The Oregon Short Line reached the area in nineteen oh nine, and the town was formally incorporated as a city in May of nineteen nineteen.

Today Wilder grows potatoes, onions, sugar beets, and mint on the same irrigated desert its founders opened a century ago, named for a man who never farmed a day in his life.