Bovill Historical Photograph Collection

Contents: About the Collection | About Bovill | Sources | Tech

About the Collection

This collection of 153 images depicts the history of Bovill between 1904 and 2000 and was collected by the Latah County Historical Society during a project to document the history of Bovill. Many images depict Bovill schools and schoolchildren, as well as graduation events.

Other images depict community events, such as Statehood Day in 1990, as well as typical street scenes, buildings, and residential houses. Finally, some images depict women of Bovill, CCC, sports teams, and lumber and railroad industries.

This collection also contains images of the Bovill Historical Museum which was later turned into the Bovill Opera House.

About Bovill, Idaho

Bovill has been described as “a town whose history exemplifies many of the elements that today we associate with the Wild West.”¹ The story of Bovill begins with Francis Warren who had a personal settlement on the site. An Englishman, Hugh Bovill, came in 1899 to buy Warren’s site “and build a hotel that could accommodate fellow hunters and anglers with an appetite for adventure” because he had been “drawn to the American frontier by tales of ample big game.”¹ The town initially grew because the timber industry was growing and drawing “homesteaders to northeast Latah County, so Bovill opened a story to supply their needs.”¹

To learn more about Bovill’s early days, Latah County Historical Society recorded oral histories in the 1970s that “reveal the hardships that folks endured, the kindness of strangers and the fire that destroyed much of the town.”¹

Sources