rodeo | The USA: Landscapes and Urban Spaces

We arrived in Idaho Falls, another settlement with a railroad presence, but in this case, a presence more substantial than in Blackfoot but less so than in Pocatello. Downtown was located between the interstate and the railroad to the east and the Snake River to the west. Although having more blocks than downtown in Pocatello and Blackfoot, downtown in Idaho Falls did not have buildings that were more interesting or unusual. However, Bonneville Hotel and Federal Building were impressive landmarks, and the Kress, Shane and Hasbrouk buildings had some unusual external ornamentation. Nonetheless, Idaho Falls provided more eating, drinking and shopping opportunities than Pocatello and Blackfoot, and it had the delightful waterfall that gave the town half its name. The waterfall was notable for dropping about only 5 or 6 yards (however, a weir immediately behind the natural cascade made it look taller), but it was about 100 yards wide, thereby making it highly distinctive. One of the best views was when we aligned the waterfall so that the town’s stunning white Latter-day Saints Temple with its tapering tower was in the background. An ugly cylindrical-shaped hotel overlooked the waterfall along the Snake River’s west bank, but the rooms facing east had lovely views.

On our way to Albertson’s Supermarket, we stopped to take photos of a large tent beside Highway 20 from where a man was selling fireworks in the run-up to Independence Day. The man was a retired Idaho police officer who sold fireworks from the tent a few times every year “so I can afford the vacations”. He had not sold many fireworks that day, but expected to do better the next three days because Independence Day was on Friday.

Downtown, Idaho Falls, Idaho

The Falls, Idaho Falls, Idaho

Fireworks for Independence Day, Idaho Falls, Idaho

Idaho City had an official population of 458, so, compared to some places we had seen on the road so far, it was quite large. The town was founded in 1862 (during the civil war) as Bannock at the height of the Boise Basin gold rush, said by some people to be the largest gold rush since the Californian one about 13 years earlier. A plentiful supply of water meant that Bannock thrived while nearby mining camps contracted and, as its population increased, the new Idaho territorial legislature changed the town’s name to Idaho City. In the mid-1860s, there were more than 200 businesses in the settlement including many saloons and almost as many law offices. In 1864, its population of 7,000 made it the largest city in the north-west, bigger even than Portland. Because it was so plentiful, wood was the most popular material for construction and fuel, which explains why the town had burned down four times by 1871.

St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church was built in 1864, thereby becoming the first Roman Catholic parish in Idaho Territory. Idaho City is also important in Masonic history because the Grand Lodge of Idaho was founded in the town in 1867. Almost from its foundation as Bannock, many Chinese came to work in the mines, open laundries or engage in cooking. The 1870 census reported that 1,751 Chinese lived in Idaho City.

As soon as it became obvious that most valuable minerals had been extracted from the Boise Basin, decline set in rapidly. By 1920, Idaho City’s population had dropped to just over 100. The modern economy relied on hunting, fishing and visitors. Visitors stopped to see a remote settlement in which a remarkable number of interesting old buildings survived (18 buildings were listed because of their historical importance). Some of the buildings still had boardwalks in front of them. There was also a cemetery of historic note and a high school.

Idaho City, Idaho

Because the Cabana Inn was on Boise’s Main Street, all I had to do to get to downtown was to walk south-east along the road it overlooked. It soon became apparent that Boise had some impressive architecture. Buildings of note included old hotels, houses and shops. One of the latter was Hannifans Cigars. One of my favourite buildings was the Owyhee, a large structure in the art moderne style that resembled a one-time department store. Restoration of the Owyhee was nearly complete and it looked as if it would have multiple uses as somewhere to work, live and provide entertainment in bars and restaurants. I also liked the Egyptian Theatre with its kitschy ancient Egyptian decorative flourishes externally and internally, and the elegant Capitol. As so often in states across the US, the Capitol was built in the neo-classical style. Between Main and West Bannock streets were many notable structures on blocks both sides of North Capitol Boulevard, and more interesting buildings, including the Basque Museum and Cultural Centre, lay along West Grove Street. Near the Cabana Inn was a furniture store in another notable art moderne structure, this one more obviously industrial in character; a large and very interesting thrift store (by the end of the trip, we must have seen at least one thrift store in almost every town we drove through, stayed in overnight or walked around for a short break); A Tavola, an up-market cafe, food store and gift shop serving food indoors or to take away from breakfast to dinner; a wine bar; an art gallery in a delightful building dating from 1910 that used to be owned by the American Linen Company; and, beneath the flyovers of Highways 20 and 26, brightly painted murals largely ignored by the young males who came to refine their skateboarding skills in a large skateboard park.

Boise, Idaho

Riggins was an important base in Idaho for fishing, hunting, rafting and trekking, so it was inevitable that a lot of the cafes, bars, restaurants, motels and RV parks met the needs of tourists and visitors. However, there were just enough people living in it permanently to ensure that Riggins possessed some of the characteristics of a small town not wholly dependent on tourism. As a result, Riggins was a very good base for two nights. Moreover, local people seemed very friendly. Our first evening in the town, I chatted with a Texan who had moved to Riggins 40 years before and had loved every minute of his life since. A man delivering bags of ice to a small supermarket on Main Street confirmed that it was quite rare for Riggins to suffer from snow. “If it does get snow,” he said, “it is cleared very quickly because Highway 95 is so important for the flow of traffic from one end of Idaho to the other.” I also had a chat with five middle-aged and elderly men and women sinking a few beers outside a bar in early celebration of Independence Day. As for the following day, a woman who had just opened a shop in a small one-time house in a tiny unpaved cul-de-sac between Main Street and the river encouraged me to look around. She explained that many of the toys, dolls, miniature figures, small household items and other bric-a-brac had been given to her by an elderly friend who had died unexpectedly a few months earlier. Unable to utilise what she called “a kind woman’s treasure which no one else seemed to appreciate”, she had decided to sell everything she had inherited along with more conventional gift shop items bought wholesale from the suppliers of scented candles, gift-wrapped candies and pots of jam and marmalade.

I walked the whole length of Main Street and crossed the bridge leading to Forest Service Road 1614 because there were two things I had noticed earlier in the day that looked very interesting, the site of Riggins rodeo and, just above where the Salmon and Little Salmon rivers converged, a row of old wood and corrugated iron buildings, which, although abandoned, had somehow survived more or less intact.

The shabby and neglected rodeo stood on flat ground just below a steep valley wall. There were seating, a ticket office, a trailer, corrals for livestock and a raised wooden box from where judges or officials could overlook the arena (although “arena” was far too grand a word to describe where the events of the rodeo unfolded). Patches of fading red, white and blue paint sought to invest the scene with some patriotic fervour, but this was a place that had seen far better days, despite still being occasionally used.

I walked a little further along the road, then noticed some “No trespassing” signs warning me not to approach the patch of ground on which the terrace of old wood and corrugated buildings stood (“No trespassing” signs were everywhere in Idaho and were encountered almost as frequently in Utah. Private property was very private in the US and the public’s right of access to it was far more restricted than in the UK or Europe). I looked around. No one was in sight and the nearby road was devoid of traffic. I clambered down a gravel bank and saw an old sign with a painted arrow indicating that a trail led beside the river so that fishing could be undertaken. I walked to the riverbank and stayed with the trail until I was about 50 yards from the old buildings. I then broke cover to look around.

The terrace of old buildings was interesting enough, but I also came across a few other old buildings, machinery used for sorting rock and the remains of concrete structures that reminded me of some of the ones we had encountered in the coal mining camps to the west of Helper in Utah. I did not for one moment think I had come across an old coal mine, but was almost certain I stood in front of the remains of some sort of mine.

Riggins, Idaho

We were hoping to stay two nights in the town of Bluff, about 30 miles from Mexican Hat. When we arrived to find cliffs enclosing the flat valley floor, we were very glad we had chosen the town as our destination. The first motel we tried, the Mokee, had a vacancy, and the price for a well-equipped, very clean and recently up-graded room was so competitive that we agreed to stay without checking nearby options. Research undertaken later confirmed that we had secured a very good deal.

Bluff had a population of about 300. With Monument Valley, Valley of the Gods, Goosenecks State Park and Hovenweep National Monument all within easy reach with your own transport, the town existed largely to meet the needs of tourists, but it was just large enough (yes, I kid you not) to have facilities such as gas stations, small shops, diners and a post office to meet the everyday needs of a permanent local population that did not depend on tourism. Amazingly, the oldest part of the settlement had a historic “city” loop, which was no more than the road enclosing two or three blocks, one block of which had Bluff’s meticulously reconstructed fort. However, we both liked Bluff, and not only because the fort had many artefacts and displays reflecting first people and pioneer lifestyle and culture dating back about 250 years.

We went for a walk as far as Twin Rocks. We looked around the grounds of Desert Rose Inn and Cabins, perhaps the town’s best lodgings; admired the eroded cliffs that squeezed against the linear town; saw three of Bluff’s more substantial but still quite modest Victorian-era houses; found some fencing and other facilities that constituted the land set aside for rodeos; noted that quite a lot of old motor vehicles had been left to rot outside; took photos of some of the roadside signs evoking the recent past; and encountered a slim desert fox and half a dozen rabbits. I warmed to Bluff, just as some artists and craftspeople had. Artists and craftspeople had settled in the town in recent years, the region’s remarkable visibility being an attraction almost as great as the nearby natural wonders.

The Fort, Bluff, Utah

Bluff, Utah

We eventually arrived in Hanksville and took a room in the Hanksville Inn. We were charged $77 a night without breakfast. The room was expensive, but we were grateful for somewhere to stay (the only other functioning motel seemed to be full). We had chats with the owner who had been running the motel with his mother for a few years, but neither were very concerned about its appearance except for the clean and comfortable rooms. The owner provided a room free of charge to a man who did small jobs around the place to keep it ticking over. The motel had some shabby and dysfunctional aspects, which more or less reflected the reality of Hanksville as a whole. However, the town had its eccentricities and I soon grew to like the place more than first impressions suggested I would.

The relatively few people who lived permanently in the town or during what passed as the summer tourist season seemed to be loners content with their own company and determined to subsist as independently as they could (no doubt a majority voted Republican in the belief that small government was better than big government). There were two gas stations, but one was rarely staffed. The other much busier gas station had a store (Hollow Mountain) occupying a small cave in a vast eruption of rock, a cave which had been enlarged as the owners met the needs of people with more sophisticated requirements in terms of food, drink, maps, guidebooks and souvenirs. Near the gas station was Blondie’s Eatery and Gift Store, which served a limited range of items for breakfast, lunch and dinner. It pulled in the customers because the local competition was almost non-existent. Across the road was the town’s best lodging option, but the night we wanted to stay, it had filled with a large number of bikers, all of whom were middle-aged or elderly. Next to the best lodging option was a derelict gas station and, on the bone-dry, flat and scrub-clad ground nearby, six houseboats in various stages of decay. Some of the houseboats had been left by their owners for safekeeping (however, there was no fence worthy of its name enclosing the land). The others had been acquired by a local man who intended to restore them to their former glory, perhaps with a view to selling them to make a profit. It is worth pointing out that the Colorado River in Glen Canyon National Recreation Area was the nearest sheet of water on which the houseboats could sail or be moored. It was about 40 miles away.

Toward the west end of the town and not far from the small post office (we were amazed how many small settlements still had post offices in the US. What a contrast with the UK where post offices in small towns and villages were closing at an alarming rate) was an abandoned motel with about a dozen small rooms. Someone, perhaps the last owner of the motel, had collected hundreds of spare parts for motor vehicles and agricultural machinery and welded them together to make figures of prehistoric and contemporary animals, and people engaged in activities such as playing musical instruments. There was also some wooden fencing. It was part of a small rodeo or large corral. Nearby were lots of bales of hay to feed livestock. Landmark buildings did not exist in Hanksville, perhaps because the settlement amounted to no more than the intersection of Highways 24 and 95 and about six nearby streets, but some old wooden buildings lurked in shadowy spots. Officially, the population was about 200. It had declined from almost 400 in 2000.