Teaching About Place: Learning From The Land

Chapter 12. Rediscovering Indian Creek: Imagining Community on the Snake River Plain

Rediscovering Indian Creek Imagining Community on the Snake River Plain r o c h e l l e j o h n s o n Freshmen who arrive in the city of Caldwell to begin their first semester at Albertson College of Idaho most likely take Exit 129 off of Interstate 84, which runs through southern Idaho. Exit 129 leads them to Twentyfirst Street—the bane of my college administration’s existence. In all seriousness, it’s a problem for recruitment, for retention, and for campus morale. Before reaching the college,Twenty-first Street enters a half-mile business development called Farm City. This poorly tended strip is about as depressing as western America can get: it features a small, fenced-in mud pool that serves as home to about a hundred crowded cows; piles of rocks, railroad ties, and concrete machines; no vegetation whatsoever (well, except cheatgrass); and—this is the worst—a prominent billboard with large letters boasting disparaging comments about the college, the “liberal” media, and the downfall of free enterprise as we know it. “Welcome to Farm City!” In fact, the entire city of Caldwell is pretty depressing. When I arrived here in 1999, I found a once-busy rural western town largely c h a p t e r 1 2 “People of every place and time deserve a history.” —Joseph Amato, Rethinking Home r o c h e l l e j o h n s o n 1 7 1 deserted and depressed economically. Ten blocks or so from the college, the buildings of the downtown area displayed far too many “For Rent” signs, and the sidewalks were deserted. The shops that remained—the pawnshop, the gun shop, the area thrift store, and the independently owned department store with shelves of dusty items—were struggling. One day a few months after my move here, the only car wash in town literally collapsed. (Luckily, no one was inside it at the time.) Caldwell needed help, and because the condition of the town discouraged so many of our prospective students from attending the college, my place of employment needed help, too. And to be honest, I needed help. To my New England family’s utter surprise, I had decided to try to make this place home. After my initial shock, I committed myself to the place because of its nearby mountains, its sagebrush-covered deserts, and its grand skies. But developing a sense of place in Caldwell was proving difficult. In the midst of my disenchantment, I was surprised to learn that the car wash hadn’t merely collapsed; rather, it had fallen into a creek. Creek? What creek? It was then that I learned that much of downtown Caldwell rests on concrete and rebar slabs that were used several decades ago to cover up an unsightly, filthy waterway: Indian Creek, which flows some fifty-five miles through the Western Snake River Plain of southern Idaho and meets the Boise River just west of town. Once the very reason for human settlement here, the creek had been covered during the midtwentieth century by streets, parking lots, and buildings. Most area residents were ignorant of the creek’s existence—they were too young to have known it, too old to care about it anymore, or new in town, like me. On a walk one day near campus, I realized that Indian Creek 1 7 2 m e e t i n g t h e c h a l l e n g e s also runs under Twenty-first Street in Farm City. While driving down that street, incoming students just might catch a glimpse of the creek between the railroad ties and the rock pile. By 2001, city officials began to wonder if raising awareness of the creek might help address their economic problems. The plight of the car wash actually helped them toward their dreams, since part of the creek was now showing itself. Many citizens were against this plan, but soon city leaders were suggesting uncovering—or “daylighting”—Indian Creek. Feeling directionless and economically vulnerable, city leaders saw Indian Creek as a potential element of an attractive downtown— one that regularly featured people walking, shopping, and visiting. Their dreams involved making the creek the town centerpiece; they imagined walking paths and benches along the waterway, and nearby coffee shops, businesses, and restaurants. They dreamed large: the individual who had first...