Star

The community of Star was one of the earliest settlements in the Boise Valley.

One of the first settlers was Ben F. Swalley who in 1863 drove his ox team and wagon onto 300 acres of land along the Boise River, one mile south of the present town. Others soon followed, homesteading the good farmland along the Boise River. The surrounding farms often catered to the needs of early travelers and miners providing them with food and lodging on their way to and from the mines in the Boise Basin.

One of the later branches of the Oregon Trail that crossed the river near Boise passed through what now is Star, just south of present-day Highway 44. Ezra Meeker, who spent his last years marking the course of the old Oregon Trail, visited Star on May 5, 1906. Portions of this early Oregon trail corridor became the Old Valley Road connecting Boise to Caldwell. In the spring, travelers had to take the alternate foothills road to keep from getting stuck in the mud bogs. Starting in the 1860s, the stage from Boise City followed Old Valley Road and arrived at Gray’s Station just east of Star, near the old Balm Mill, on what is now Moon Valley Road. Here the stage left Old Valley Road and proceeded northwest through the sagebrush to the Willow Creek Stage Station, northwest of Star. The route continued to Payette and eventually to Umatilla, Oregon, and the Columbia River. Stage routes served the area through the 1880s with their big six-horse coaches.