BOISE, Idaho — On this Memorial Day, we remember those who were buried here at the Fort Boise Military Cemetery.
“So the town of Boise, Idaho, was started by Fort Boise," said Ken Swanson, the former director of the state and military museums. He says that Fort Boise was the one stop between Eastern Idaho and Washington State; a place where pioneers could stop and rest and, in some cases, bury their dead.
I spent the morning listening to Swanson tell stories of those who came through Boise. “You can barely read it. Robert, son of William McComb, born in Lewistown, Illinois, 1814. He would have been an Oregon Trail guy," Swanson said.
You may think that because veterans of the Civil War and the Indian Wars are buried here, they died in battle. Not so, says Swanson.
“They opened the cemetery because they had some deaths," Swanson explained. "Nobody actually died from wounds here, they died of Cholera and other things. One father and his four or five children, they all died of Cholera within three days of each other, and the wife had to wrap them up and put them out the doors because the troopers weren’t getting close, and they dragged them here and put them in a grave.”
The military cemetery was moved to its current location in the Military Reserve in 1907. “They figured it was far enough away from the past and wasn’t going to bother anybody," Swanson said.
Boise Parks and Recreation maintains the site and asks visitors to show respect as they would in any cemetery.
