Note 203 — Chapter VIII · {III}

Fort Boise was built in the spring of 1834 (not 1832) by Thomas McKay, stepson of Dr McLoughlin, the Hudson's Bay factor at Fort Vancouver. It was at first but a miserable pen of crooked saplings, a few miles up Boise River; but later was, as Farnham mentions, removed below the mouth of the river, and constructed of adobe. It was an important station on the Oregon Trail—the resting place after the difficult travel of the Snake River plains, and before attempting the rough route to the Columbia. With the decline of the fur-trade, the importance of Fort Boise was much diminished, and when it was destroyed (1853) by a remarkable rise of Snake River, it was but partially repaired. A neighboring Indian massacre (1854) caused the post to be entirely abandoned the succeeding year. In 1863 the government built a military post known as Fort Boise, or Boise Barracks, fifty miles above the old Hudson's Bay post, at the site of the modern city of Boise.—Ed.