Tour: Foote Park Interpretive Center

City Club of Boise members are invited to attend a guided tour of the Foote Park Interpretive Center. Foote Park Center was built to improve the existing Foote Park Site to honor two individuals, Arthur DeWint and Mary Hallock Foote. They had important impacts on the physical and cultural developments in Idaho's Treasure Valley. The Center highlights the Footes who had a vision of the Treasure Valley populated with thousands of prosperous families.

The Center is located at the site of the original Foote Stone House, designed and built by Arthur Foote in 1885. It was funded by sales of Mary's literary works, and constructed using lava rock for the walls and native wood for floors and cupboards, as well as cement made from Arthur’s formula.

During the tour, park co-founders Dr. Janet Worthington and Mary Ann Arnold will walk you through the park, telling the Foote story, explaining the displays, interpretive panels, and other park features. Additionally, they will share the backstory of how they envisioned, funded, and built the Center. A costumed “Mary Hallock Foote” will likely stop by to welcome you to the site!

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, who designed the New York Canal. 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. 

Saturday, August 21, 2021 from 9:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m.

Directions: From Highway 21, turn to cross Lucky Peak Dam, follow the ridge road for about 1⁄2 mile to the next Foote Park Sign, turn right downhill back towards the river, and travel about 1⁄2 mile to the park at end of the gravel road.