Mark Iverson - Murder & Mayhem in Boise

Published by The History Press

Charleston, SC

www.historypress.com

Copyright 2022 by Mark Iverson and Jeff Wade

All rights reserved

E-Book year 2022

First published 2022

ISBN 978.1.4396.7605.9

Library of Congress Control Number: 2022937890

Print Edition ISBN 978.1.4671.5169.6

Notice: The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. It is offered without guarantee on the part of the authors or The History Press. The authors and The History Press disclaim all liability in connection with the use of this book.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form whatsoever without prior written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

I dedicate this book to my father, Gary Iverson, whose love of history inspired me to follow my lifes passion.

Mark Iverson

CONTENTS

PREFACE

A few years ago, Mark had an idea. After leading a few walking tours around Boise, he began receiving specific types of questions regarding some of the historic sites he passed on his walks. These questions often involved the morbid, lurid and macabre nature of Boises past. He soon realized that people did not simply want to hear the standard version of Boises historythey wanted something darker. He started digging. After a few months of research, he possessed enough content to stitch together a historical walking tour called A Macabre History of Boise: A Walking Tour. Residents of Boise, Idaho, and tourists began to attend the tour; it became more popular than Mark originally expected. The recipe included a bit of solid history and a touch of murder, with a pinch of vice and prostitution for good measure.

I first heard of Mark and his Macabre Boise tour when Angie Davis, a mutual friend, posted an ad for the event on social media. The idea of a macabre tour really appealed to me. It is the only walking tour I have ever paid to attend. Walking along the streets of Boise with Mark, I could see the passion he had for telling local stories. By the time the two-hour tour was over, Mark let it slip that he was looking for a business partner. I wanted to work with him but was not quite ready for the commitment. Over the course of the next few weeks, we kept talking. I joked at one point that when he was ready to write a book on the macabre history of Boise, I could help him out. Apparently, he took that joke seriously because here we are publishing Murder & Mayhem in Boise together.

It has been an interesting ride turning an expanded version of Marks tour into a book. This publication has allowed us to expand the geographical scope of the subject matter, from a few blocks in downtown Boise to a large part of the Eastern Boise Valley. I have learned so much about the history of Boise from our research, and I hope that through these stories our readers might do the same. As historians, our main goal is to teach this history, and we have chosen a unique way to do so. Through stories of death and tragedy, we better understand the evolution Boise has gone through, while also reminding us of what Boise was and, perhaps, what it might be again. From Boise Citys wild frontier mining days through to the modern era, we endeavored to contextualize the stories of the common, everyday people who lived, struggled, failed, succeeded and often died in Boise.

Since we based this book on Marks historical tour, we thought it appropriate to bring a little aspect of a tour to the book. We have included WHERE TO SEE IT sections at the end of each story so readers may visit the places mentioned for themselves should they wish. We hope that our book works as a sort of self-guided tour of the sites where some of Boises most macabre events occurred. We would like to caution the reader to respect the places from this book they may choose to visit. Please be sure to respect private and public property, along with those people who died there.

JEFF WADE

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First of all, and most importantly, we would like to thank our wives, Blair and Michala, for giving us their love and support throughout the writing of this book, as well as building IdaHistory. We would also like to thank Blair for her editing and formatting. Almost as important, we would like to thank the staff at the Idaho State Archives for helping us find and scan many of the images you will see in this book.

We would also like to thank Anthony Parry at the Old Idaho Penitentiary for allowing us to visit and photograph the Old Pen cemetery on that cold, blustery day, as well as Daniel Grundel at the Boise Arts and History Department for digging through cemetery records to find that one namethat needle in the haystack.

INTRODUCTION

From its humble beginnings as a collection of merchant tents set up to serve miners headed to the Boise Basin and travelers on the Oregon Trail, Boise and its citizens contended with violence, as did most other frontier settlements. Along with the many good and honest citizens who moved to Boise City, there were more than a few of the rougher elements mixed in. The frontier era was a time when horse thieves and road agents rode unchecked through the Boise Valley, and meeting ones demise at the end of a gun was nearly as likely as dying from a plethora of rampant diseases. In the eastern United States, the violent cataclysm of the Civil War was being fought, while in the Boise River Valley, several companies of soldiers entered the Boise Valley on June 28, 1863. The troops first camped on Government Island, the area now comprising much of Garden City just west of downtown Boise. Their commander, Major Pinckney Lugenbeel, began searching for the best location to establish a military camp, and from July 2 to July 4, 1863, the same days the future of the Union was being decided on the fields of Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, Lugenbeel selected the site on which to build Fort Boise. Yet, eastern battlefields were not the only locations where the Civil War was fought; the mines of the western United States played an equally important role in deciding the fate of the nation. To strengthen the Unions grip on these mines, Lincoln established the Idaho Territory on March 3, 1863, allowing his administration to continue to use its wealth to fuel the war effort. Divided between law-abiding Idahoans and outlaws, miners and those who would rob them, settlers and indigenous peoples and pro-Confederate and pro-Union citizens, it makes sense that the Idaho Territory, Boise City included, witnessed high levels of violence from the start.

Major Pinkney Lugenbeel. D 497-A, Idaho State Archives.

Gold was discovered on Orofino Creek, a tributary of the Clearwater River, in 1861. Idahos first gold rush had begun. From there, prospectors and miners worked their way south, establishing towns like Florence, Warren and Elk City along the way. In response to a vague description of possible gold fields farther south offered by a member of the Bannock Tribe, a number of expeditions left Florence in the early spring of 1862. When the treasure hunters reached a natural basin nestled between mountains, they commenced prospecting, finding gold in their pans on August 2. Soon after their arrival, the party was attacked by a band of Shoshone and one of the leaders of the group, George Grimes, was killed by the creek that now bears his name. He was deposited in a prospect hole and then covered over by his fellow miners, and his marked grave still rests at the top of Grimes Pass.