The name: Believe it or not, investors at one time envisioned a the town as a second San Francisco and wanted to name it Golden Gate. Instead, it was named after magazine editor Marshal Wilder after “The Delineator” printed a favorable article about the township.

History: Like the settlers who came to Huston, early arrivals to Wilder were dismayed at the community’s barren landscape and the meager prospects for growing healthy crops.

Although the Snake and Boise rivers were nearby, they provided little solace. The springs and the few wells that existed were not enough to provide the irrigation that the farmers who steadily migrated to the area needed for their crops to grow and thrive. Many were faced with the unenviable task of hauling water from the Snake River or the Dixie Slough.

But as it had in Huston, the Bureau of Reclamation’s establishment in 1902 may have saved the town from agricultural extinction.

After J.H. Lowell, president of the Payette-Boise Water Users Association, convinced the bureau money was needed to build two new dams in the Deer Flat area near Nampa, work began on the Deer Flat Reservoir in 1906. Completed with the help of local farmers in 1909 and fed by the Boise River, the reservoir released water to farms through irrigation canals and water ditches.

Trivia fact: The first crops raised in Wilder were alfalfa, hay, corn, seed crops and grain.