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Mary Hallock Foote & Arthur De Wint Foote

Mary Hallock Foote & Arthur De Wint Foote in Idaho

Mary Hallock Foote 1847-1938
Arthur De Wint Foote 1849-1933

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.
View from the Canyon House site, near the Boise River, June 2013
View from the Canyon House site, near the Boise River, June 2013

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 third floor of  the downtown 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.

Short Stories by Mary Hallock Foote

  • “Coeur d’Alene.”
  • “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.
  • Cragg, Barbara, Dennis M. Walsh, Mary Ellen Walsh, editors. The Idaho stories and Far West illustrations of Mary Hallock Foote. Idaho State University Press, 1988.

Novels by Mary Hallock Foote

  • The Chosen Valley
  • The Desert and the Sown
  • Edith Bonham
  • The Ground-Swell
  • John Bodewin’s Testimony
  • The Last Assembly Ball
  • Led-Horse Claim : A Romance of a Mining Camp
  • A Picked Company
  • The Prodigal
  • The Royal Americans
  • A Touch of Sun
  • The Valley Road

About Mary Hallock Foote

  • ‘Archaeologists Dig Into History.’” The Idaho Statesman. June 27, 1986 pages 1C, 2C.
  • Armstrong, Regina. “Representative American Women Illustrators.” Critic. August 1900 pages 131-8.
  • Bickford-Swarthout, Doris. Mary Hallock Foote: Pioneer Woman Illustrator. Berry Hill Press, 1996.
  • McGilchrist, Megan Riley. Exile, nature, and transformation in the life of Mary Hallock Foote. University of Nevada Press, 2021.
  • Johnson, Lee Ann. Mary Hallock Foote. Twayne, 1980.
  • Maguire, James H. Mary Hallock Foote. Boise State College western writers series no. 2, 1972.
  • Miller, Darlis A. Mary Hallock Foote: author-illustrator of the American West. University of Oklahoma Press, 2002.
  • Bickford-Swarthout, Doris. Mary Hallock Foote: Pioneer Woman Illustrator. Berry Hill Press, 1996.
  • Rodman, W. Paul. A Victorian Gentlewoman in the Far West: The Reminiscences of Mary Hallock Foote. Huntington Library, 1972.
  • Smith, Christine Hill. Reading A Victorian Gentlewoman in the Far West — the reminiscences of Mary Hallock Foote. Boise State University, 2002.
  • Smith, Christine Hill. Social class in the writings of Mary Hallock Foote. University of Nevada Press, 2009.
  • Rodman, W. Paul. When Culture Came to Boise: Mary Hallock Foote in Idaho. Idaho State Historical Soicety, 1977.
  •  Special issue of the Idaho Prospector Newsletter featuring Mary Hallock Foote, from the Idaho State Historical Society Library & Archives (archived)
I stayed there until the beginning of the next winter, and while there I became interested in an irrigation project on the Boise River in the Snake River Valley. The land lies betwen the Boise and the Snake, forming a peninsula. I took up water-rights on the Boise River and made the surveys for a canal to serve some 300,000 acres of land.Arthur De Wint Foote in Interviews with Mining Engineers by Thomas Arthur Rickard.

Reports by Arthur De Wint Foote

  • Foote, Arthur De Wint. The Idaho Mining and Irrigation Company, 1884.
  • Foote, Arthur De Wint. Report on the Feasibility of Irrigating and Reclaiming Certain Desert Lands Between the Snake and Boise Rivers in Ada County, Idaho, and of other projects connected therewith. Printed by E.O. Jenkins, 1883.
  • Foote, Arthur De Wint. Report on the Feasibility of Irrigating and Reclaiming Certain Desert Lands between the Snake and Boise Rivers, Ada County, Idaho, and of other Projects Connected Therewith, 1884.
  • Foote, Arthur De Wint. Report on the Irrigating and Reclaiming of Certain Desert Lands in Idaho and other projects connected therewith. 1887.

Irrigation and A.D. Foote

  • Boise River, Idaho (Diversion Dam to Snake River): flood data and 1868 & 1939 channel locations. War Department and U.S. Army Corp of Engineers. Set of 3 maps.
  • Mining Engineers and the American West : The Lace-Boot Brigade 1849-1933, by Clark C. Spence.
  • Murphy, Paul Lloyd. Irrigation in the Boise Valley, 1863-1903. A study in pre-federal irrigation,1947.
  • Rickard, Thomas Arthur. Interviews with Mining Engineers. Mining and Scientific Press, 1922.
  • Spence, Clark C. Mining Engineers and the American West: The Lace-Boot Brigade 1849-1933, University of Idaho Press, 1993.
  • Hillcrest Neighborhood Plan, 2007 (PDF). Hillcrest Neighborhood Association.

Homes

The Footes lived in the Canyon House on the Boise River. They also lived in the the North Star House, designed by architect Julia Morgan, in Grass Valley, California.

 

Research and text by Ellen Druckenbrod, Boise Public Library. Updated 8/25/2022 Ronnie Joiner.