6 Things That Used to be HUGE in Boise But Have Disappeared

Drop the little stick figure onto any street in Boise on Google Maps and it’s obvious just how much the area’s changed since the first time the Street View car drove through our area in 2007!

While it’s easy to see where new construction has gone up or how facades of buildings have changed, those pictures don’t capture some of the Boise area’s biggest memories! How many of these things do you remember? 

Wild Waters

Do the names Bonzai, Corkscrew and Roundhouse sound familiar? If so, we’d venture to guess that you were probably a season pass holder at Boise’s original water park. Wild Waters was located at 1850 Century Way and was as much a summer staple as floating the Boise River. 

READ MORE: If You Remember More Than 10 Of These Things You’re Officially “Old Boise”

One of the things that made Wild Waters unique was the fact that it took advantage of some of Boise’s natural topography while building the slides. If you search “Wild Waters” in some of the great Boise history groups on Facebook like “History of Boise, Idaho - 1863 To Present” or “Boise & The Treasure Valley History All of Idaho’s History” there are some really cool images of the park, including an old aerial image that superimposes the park where it would be in present day Boise. 

Unfortunately, Wild Waters closed and was demolished to make way for the Flying Y. Roaring Springs was never a competitor for Wild Waters. Instead, it was the brainchild of five local businessmen who got the ball rolling to create something new to fill the gaping void the community felt when Wild Waters closed. 

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Speaking of Roaring Springs, do you remember their Friday night, teen dance party? According to the park’s website, it lasted from 2007-2010. It was the place to see and be seen for high schoolers that wanted to dance with their friends somewhere other than a school gymnasium where they were being watched by their teachers.

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Of course, you put a bunch of teens with raging hormones in an environment where bikinis and board shorts were the dress code? Well, you can imagine what happened. Eventually Roaring Springs backed off the wild teen party and transitioned to a more family friendly “Slide Night.” 

Bogies Night Club

And there were those awkward years between 18-20. Yes, you were technically an adult but you were still too young to get into the cool clubs of the times like China Blue, Main Street Bistro and Fatty’s. So…you went to Bogies.

The nightclub was 18+ on Friday for College Night and all ages on Saturday Night. We’re not sure when they changed the permissions on it, but there are some pretty cringey photos of those days on this old Flickr album if you still have an account on that page. We mean teen girls braces grinding on guys in their 20s…cringey. Oh and there’s a handful of YouTube videos that you may be in, too. Ahhhh…memories. 

The Boise Hole

If you’re our age, you don’t remember the Eastman Building because it burned down the year before we were born. But if you were born before January 1987, you might remember the 82 year old office building that used to stand on the corner of Eight and Main. After the debris was cleared, that corner remained a vacant hole for years. 

Multiple owners had promised to build a new building on the site, but it wasn’t until Gardner Company and Zions Bank financed the tallest building in Idaho and filled the hole with the Eighth & Main tower we know today. When it opened in 2014, the owners celebrated with a huge street party headlined by The Goo Goo Dolls. 

Idaho Stampede Basketball

We’ll never understand why the Idaho Steelheads can sell out Idaho Central Arena, but when Boise’s NBA D-League team played there, the reception wasn’t quite the same. Oh, you don’t remember Boise having a basketball team that wasn’t Boise State? We did from 1997-2015. The Idaho Stampede played at the Idaho Center when it was brand new in 1997, before making the move to Qwest/CenturyLink Arena. 

The team won the D-League Finals in 2007, but by their final season in Boise? Less than 2,000 were showing up to their games. The ownership moved the team to Salt Lake during the 2016-2017 season and now professional hoops in Downtown Boise is just a distant memory.

The Boise River Festival

Once given the distinction of being “America’s Finest Family Festival,” the event used to take over multiple venues throughout the city: Ann Morrison Park, Julia Davis Park and the parking lot at Bronco Stadium. During the celebration, there were concerts, hot air balloon launches, a night glow, carnival rides, fun runs and parades. 

In fact, at one point the River Giants parade included big helium balloons like the ones you’d see at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade. During the evening light parade, floats built by the same people who were building floats for the Rose Parade in California, literally floated down the Boise River. At 15-feet high they were big enough to astonish the crowd, but short enough to make it under all the bridges they’d encounter. 

The festival traditionally concluded with an incredible 25-minute fireworks show produced by Zambelli Internationale, one of the best fireworks companies in the world. The last festival was held in 2003. According to the Idaho Business Review, the 2003 festival lost $160,000. That would be the final year of the festival.