Boise Past and Present

I started to put this wiki together in December 2010, so if you're stumbling across it anytime shortly thereafter, it's probably looking a bit rough around the edges.

I moved to Boise in July 2010 from Davis, California, a city that had a phenomenal wiki—that is, a website whose pages anyone can edit—about the town. Over a period of several years, the residents had created a one-stop resource for information anyone might need about life in Davis: how to rent an apartment, which dentists folks recommend, where to get a good haircut, dog park etiquette—pretty much anything you want to know about Davis, it's on the wiki. When I landed in Boise, I found there was no such similar resource, and I felt Boise was much in need of one.

Not only did I need to find a gentle dentist and a good pet sitter—as a public historian, I also wanted to create a place where people could share information about Boise's recent and distant past. Accordingly, you'll find many pages on the site that are mere seeds—tiny bits of information that need to be grown into more robust accounts of Boise's history. Whether you're an amateur or professional historian, or just someone whose family has lived in Boise for generations and thus knows where all the proverbial skeletons are hidden, I hope you'll contribute to these pages. As part of class projects, my students and I will be writing clusters of pages on selected themes, and I welcome similar projects from interested groups of Boise residents, as well as Boise teachers and professors.

If there's something you'd like to share about Boise, past or present, please add it to the wiki. This space is for all of us who find ourselves in Boise—old timers, newcomers, and folks just passing through—and chances are you know some tidbit that will be useful to your fellow Boiseans as well as to visitors.

For more background on community wikis in general this wiki in particular, you might check out these pages:

* Reviews and Page Comments * Welcome to the Wiki (for business owners

Join me

I will be holding workshops on the vision for the wiki, and about how to edit the wiki, in 2013. Watch the wiki's front page, as well as its events page, for information on these workshops.

If you have questions or comments about the wiki—or ideas for its improvement—I may be reached via e-mail at Leslie Madsen-Brooks -at- boisestate -dot- edu.

I look forward to building a resource about Boise alongside those who know it best!

Leslie Madsen-Brooks