Idaho—Place of My Heart -Award Winning Author, Jacquie Rogers

"A hell of a lot of state, this Idaho, that I didn't know about." Ernest Hemingway as quoted by Lloyd Arnold in High on the Wild with Hemingway.

There certainly is a lot of Idaho and I was lucky to have been born here.  We’re mixed up with Iowa and Ohio, great places for sure, but they’re not my Idaho.  As I explain to my friends who’ve never been here, it’s the blank spot between Wyoming and Oregon.  Idaho has everything from high mountain desert to a seaport.  We have skiing—Sun Valley being the first ski destination in the country, all manner of outdoor activities, and great dirt for gardening.

Idaho also has a rich, but generally ignored, Old West history ripe for fiction and I’ve set one series and several other books here including the Hearts of Owyhee series.  The southwest corner, Owyhee County, is where I grew up.  Now I live across the Snake River, but close enough to see the beautiful Owyhee Mountains from my kitchen window.  Makes doing dishes not quite the chore.

Looking down at Treasure Valley from the Owyhee Mountains near Silver City

By the way, “Owyhee” is the original anglicized spelling of “Hawaii,” and the name comes from three Hawaiian fur trappers who went missing in this area in 1819.  Owyhee County is high mountain desert with 6 to 10 inches of precipitation annually.  The average USA precipitation is 39 inches, so yes, desert.  In fact, the wagon trains had quite a time getting through.  Oxen died, the country was rough, supplies were scarce, and water was scarcer—this, after the weary immigrants had already traveled a brutal thousand miles. 

Geothermal water pops up here and there, though.  When I was a kid, my idea of heaven on earth was Givens Hot Springs.  I love it so much that I wrote a scene in Much Ado About Miners that takes place at Givens.  It was always great fun when our 4-H club had picnics there.  Watermelon is sweeter, for sure, and then after we got done spitting seeds at each other, we’d swim for hours.  What a blast!  The Givens family has owned it for generations, and if you’re ever in the area, stop by.  You’ll be glad you did.

 

Another Owyhee County location I use frequently is Silver City, Idaho, which is one of the few boom towns that didn’t burn, and still has about 70 or so residents in the summer, 1 in the winter. 

Silver has no electricity but the Idaho Hotel is open for business, and owner Jerri Nelson makes the best pies in Idaho.  It’s worth the trip just for a piece of Jerri-Berry pie.  You can check it out at https://www.historicsilvercityidaho.com/.  I hold a readers’ party there every year the third weekend of July.  Yes, we eat pie.

Present day Silver City, Idaho

The Paxton Family plays at Jacquie Rogers’ Much Ado About Silver City

The historic Idaho Hotel

We have a great time at the readers’ event which features the world’s worst melodrama, a charity auction for neurofibromatosis, historic tours, trail rides, awesome music, visiting the old-fashioned way, a multi-author booksigning, and more.  If you’d like to attend, you’ll find more information at http://www.camprogers.com/silvercityevent.html.

Honey Beaulieu won’t let any rustlers near Paul Nettleton’s herd!  Paul is a fifth-generation Owyheean and lives in Silver City, where the Old West never died.

Idaho has a bunch of wonderful museums.  There’s the Oregon Trail museum in Montpelier on the east side of the state, the Idaho Museum of Natural History in Pocatello, the Idaho State Museum in Boise—all great places to visit.  But to me, the most wonderful museums are the small ones, small in size but huge on actual useful information.  My husband and I visited the Owyhee County Museum in Murphy, Idaho.

Owyhee County Museum Director Eriks Garsvo and Honey Beaulieu in front of Colonel Dewey’s ore cabinet

Then it was time for lunch, and in Murphy, the county seat, you have one choice.  The Café, run by friendly folks who serve delicious freshly cooked burgers.

 It’s a long way to the next restaurant!

Did I mention Owyhee County has one parking meter?  It’s in front of the courthouse, and if you park there and don’t put money in the meter, you will get a ticket.  We have a traffic light, too, but it’s only temporary while the new Marsing bridge is being built.  The light has only been there a month but we’re ready for it to be gone.

 So that’s my little corner of Idaho.  Please come visit!  We could have coffee at Murphy Café, or The Bowling Alley in Homedale, or maybe at the Sandbar in Marsing.  Afterwards, we could shoot a few clips at the gun range.

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Jacquie Rogers is author of the Will Rogers Gold Medallion Award-winning series, Honey Beaulieu – Man Hunter, and the Laramie Award Winning series, Hearts of Owyhee.  She grew up milking cows and hoeing beets in Owyhee County, Idaho, and was even Homedale Fair Queen. Sign up for her newsletter, the Pickle Barrel Gazette, at her website: http://www.jacquierogers.com (scroll down).

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