President Franklin Roosevelt Visits Boise

President Franklin Roosevelt Visits Boise. The New Deal in Idaho. , President Franklin Roosevelt’s tour of the American West in 1937 included a stop in Boise. The tour provided the president opportunities to promote New Deal public works and job stimulus programs and see first-hand how they benefitted American communities. , In Oregon, the tour’s ultimate destination, Roosevelt dedicated the Bonneville Dam on the Columbia River followed by Mt. Hood National Forest’s Timberline Lodge. Boise’s New Deal projects were smaller in scale, but still substantial. They included the construction of new public buildings, such as North Junior High School, Boise High School’s gymnasium, and the original Ada County Courthouse, to new and improved roads that connected Boiseans to remote areas such as Bogus Basin. Critical infrastructure projects, such as sewer systems, also made a positive contribution to daily life., The Roosevelt Administration created the New Deal in response to the Great Depression in the 1930s. New Deal programs, such as the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) and Works Progress Administration (WPA), helped employ thousands of people., Captions , Fort Boise's Hospital, built at 911 North Mountain Cove Road in 1908, served as headquarters for the CCC Boise District from 1933 to 1939., Young men flocked to CCC camps where physical labor, meals and lodging provided, offered income and purpose to nearly 25,000 CCC workers spread across the many camps throughout Idaho, most of which were on National Forest lands. These workers planted 11,323,800 trees, graded 4,186 miles of truck trails, erected 198 fire lookout towers, laid 1,831 miles of telephone lines, and dug many erosion swales. In Boise, CCC workers constructed the road to Bogus Basin. Additionally, they spent 313,336 work days fighting forest fires. , The WPA funded infrastructure projects such as this sewer system. WPA projects were approved at the local level, allowing municipal governments the freedom to decide the projects of greatest benefit to their communities., The CCC Boise District headquarters moved to 1301 Capitol Boulevard in November 1939. The CCC program officially ended when the United States entered World War II in December 1941., The WPA built the Boise Art Museum and began construction on the original Idaho State Historical Museum, eventually finished in 1950. These buildings are a legacy of New Deal investment in Boise during the Great Depression.