February 13, 2012 Talking Open Space on Boise Community Radio
“Boise Yesterday and Today,” Elemental Idaho on Boise Community Radio
A one-hour radio program on the history of the Boise Foothills and the Boise River Greenbelt, featuring Jennifer Stevens, Anne Hausrath, Judy Ouderkirk, and Elaine Clegg.
Dec. 12, 2011 So You Love History?
I was recently asked to speak at a Rotary meeting about the history of the Boise Foothills and the city’s Greenbelt and River preservation. The meeting was a treat to attend. I participated in the Pledge of Allegiance (not sure the last time I recited that!), and the singing of My Country Tis’ of Thee. All of it brought back memories and a bit of nostalgia for my childhood. We met in the beautiful Crystal Ballroom at the Hoff Building, an art deco building in downtown Boise. The Hoff Building The most interesting and exciting event at the meeting was Rotary’s “History Minute,” where one member interviewed another. The interviewee, in this case, was a woman whose family had a long history in Boise. The answers she gave to the questions gave the 80+ people in the room a glimpse of Idaho’s development history, and I appreciated the respect this organization gave to our ties to the past. Thanks to Rotary for keeping people engaged in their communities and in history!
I also was recently asked to write a column for the newsletter of the Coordinating Council for Women in History. The column focuses on what a person can do with a degree in History, and why the subject still matters in our modern lives. As I tell my students, I think it’s critical to follow your passion and to realize along the way that you might have to get creative to make it work. But to pursue something that doesn’t interest you simply because there’s a market for it has never made a lot of sense to me. Happy reading, and Happy Holidays!
What Can I Do With a Ph.D. In History?
10/06/2011 Visionaries in Boise History
My involvement in the Boise civic community and knowledge of the city’s history sometimes brings me welcome invitations to participate in things that I really love. Last week, I was asked by the Boise Chamber of Commerce to conduct a tour for their 2013 Leadership Boise class, a program from which I graduated in 2005. Leadership Boise takes existing and future leaders and spends two years teaching them about Boise and its inner workings. Throughout the first year, the class meets once a month to tour facilities and hear experts talk about subjects such as business, education, politics, and infrastructure. The group’s focus for the day in which I participated was Boise’s quality of life, and I was asked to give two 1-hour tours focused on the history of the Greenbelt, Boise parks, and the Boise foothills.
National magazines have frequently written about Boise over the past 8-10 years, praising its entrepreneurial culture and its outdoor accessibility, including biking and hiking trails, 43 miles of riverside greenbelt, ample park space, and the surprisingly clean (yet urban) Boise River. It is important to remember that these things didn’t just happen spontaneously. By the middle of the 20th Century, Boise was on a path of least resistance that included polluting rivers and overbuilding in the foothills. But starting in the 1960s, elected and non-elected leaders in the larger Boise community offered a different vision for what this valley could be for its residents, and the size and relative youth of our town meant that the town’s political and business structures were (and remain) accessible to just about anyone. Many people who had a vision for Boise were able to achieve it in that supportive civic environment. For example, a history of successful entrepreneurship in Boise produced a philanthropic legacy in turn, particularly visible in Boise’s “string of pearls” parks along the Boise river named for influential women in Boise’s history, including: Julia Davis, whose husband represented pioneer agricultural success; Ann Morrison, whose husband founded Morrison Knudsen which became the preeminent dam builder in the West; and Kathryn Albertson, whose husband started the Albertson’s grocery chain.
In this relatively open community with no history of Tammany Hall-like graft and corruption, average citizens like Bill Onweiler, who spearheaded the Greenbelt idea (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dskPRdi2k9I), ran successfully for City Council in the late 1960s on a platform of open space and parks. Others like Ward Parkinson (co-founder of Micron) worked from inside the business community to ensure that private landowners along the Boise River understood the vision and provided easements to the City. Still others like Anne Hausrath, who emigrated to Boise from the eastern seaboard, aimed to protect the City’s foothills from overdevelopment in the 1980s. The openness and accessibility of the City has caused citizens to feel protective of what they have; people here feel fierce pride over what the town has done for them and feel a need for continued improvement and preservation.
Talking to new and future leaders in the community gave me the opportunity to share the vision and history of Boise’s trailblazers, conveying that the stories of great places are written by visionaries, and that there’s usually a long list of them. I hope that this class of Leadership Boise, as the ones that have come before it, continue to advance a vision for our community that will ensure its special qualities remain and grow for generations to come.
08/28/2011 Dr. Stevens Appointed to State Historical Records Advisory Board
Idaho Governor Butch Otter recently named SHRA’s Dr. Jennifer Stevens to the Idaho State Historical Records Advisory Board.
The mission of the fifteen-member Board, which is funded in part by a grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC), is to advocate for the creation, preservation, dissemination and use of information that accurately chronicles the people and institutions of Idaho, both public and private.
The Board meets four times a year to review new NHPRC grant applications and to coordinate statewide historical records concerns.
For more information on the Idaho State Records Advisory Board, please visit: http://history.idaho.gov/shrab.html
Dr. Stevens’s appointment runs through October 2013.
7/26/2011 The Evolving Historical Profession
The NY Times printed an article today (7/26/2011) about how Geographic Information Systems have helped historians “see” the past in more unique and arguably more accurate ways.
Although the article does not specifically discuss SHRA’s specialty – environmental history — the use of Geographic Information Systems, or GIS, represents a major leap forward in the search for historical accuracy in this field. SHRA’s clients often utilize GIS consultants to provide visual representations of the area in question. Their maps are incredibly helpful to our historians when reading primary sources such as General Land Office field notes and survey plats or even simple historical maps. GIS maps help us to understand historical changes in stream beds, watercourses, and any other physical changes in the land such as tree coverage or accumulation of mining waste. We have worked with many of these GIS firms over the past eight or so years to create our own maps, as well, showing changes in land ownership over time, road locations and changes over time, and any other number of important historical events. GIS is an incredible tool in legal settings where visual representation can help tell a story to opposing lawyers or to a judge who may have stacks of paper to read but for whom “a picture tells a thousand words.” That one perfect map — done in consultation with a GIS expert – can make your case.