Mary Hallock Foote 1847-1938
"We came out on the last long bench above the valley of the Boise and saw, across a bridge in the distance, the little city which was called the metropolis of the desert plains, the heaven of old teamsters and stage drivers crawling in at nightfall; saw the wild river we had come to tame, slipping from the hold of the farms along its banks that snatched a season's crops from it as it fled." From A Victorian Gentlewoman in the Far West.
Mary Hallock Foote, author and artist, arrived in Boise in 1884. A native of New York, Foote came to Idaho accompanying her engineer husband Arthur Foote, who designed the New York Canal. The two lived near the site of Discovery State Park and Diversion Dam. Their home, the Canyon House, was a thick-walled lava stone structure built with royalties from Foote's novels and short stories. They spent twelve years in the Boise area before moving on to Grass Valley, California.
Wallace Stegner's Pulitzer Prize-winning 1971 novel Angle of Repose is loosely based on Foote's life, and passages from her letters can be found in his book. An opera based on the novel was performed in San Francisco in 1976.
A collection of Mary Hallock Foote prints is on permanent exhibit on the second floor of Boise Public Library. These prints were donated to the library by The Women's Columbian Club of Boise, which was founded in 1892 and was instrumental in establishing library service in Boise.
(Call numbers are for copies at Boise Public Library)
Books about Mary Hallock Foote
Mary Hallock Foote, by Lee Ann Johnson
813.4 Foote Johnson
Mary Hallock Foote, by James H. Maguire
928 W525 No. 2
Mary Hallock Foote : Pioneer Woman Illustrator, by Doris Bickford-Swarthout
813.4 Foote Bickfor
A Victorian Gentlewoman in the Far West : The Reminiscences of Mary Hallock Foote, edited by Rodman W. Paul
813.4 Foote Foote
When Culture Came to Boise : Mary Hallock Foote in Idaho, by Rodman W. Paul
979.628 Foote Paul
Some works by Mary Hallock Foote
Coeur d'Alene
Fiction Foote
Idaho Stories and Far-West Illustrations
813.4 Foote
Led-Horse Claim : A Romance of a Mining Camp
Fiction Foote
Royal Americans
Fiction Foote
The Valley Road
Fiction Foote
Short Stories by Mary Hallock Foote
"The Cup of Trembling." Century Magazine September 1895, pp. 673-690
"The Harshaw Bride." Century Magazine May 1896, pp. 90-104
"Pilgrim Station." Atlantic Monthly May 1896, pp. 596-613
"A Touch of Sun." Century Magazine January 1900, pp. 339-350; Feb. 1900, pp. 550-558
"The Trumpeter." Atlantic Monthly November 1894, pp. 577-597; December 1894, pp. 721-72
Documents
Mary Hallock Foote letter at Boise State University
Special issue of the Idaho Prospector Newsletter featuring Mary Hallock Foote, from the Idaho State Historical Society Library & Archives
For more information about Arthur Foote and engineers on the frontier
Mining Engineers and the American West : The Lace-Boot Brigade 1849-1933, by Clark C. Spence
622 Sp32m
Arthur D. Foote's 1887 Report on the Irrigating and Reclaiming of Certain Desert Lands in Idaho
Research and text by Ellen Druckenbrod, Boise Public Library
