(From
an article in the Argus Observer, April 23, 1970)
But
New Plymouth isn't like other towns around the valley.
It
was a colony town, bought and planned before it was settled -- like a
huge 19th century housing development. It lays claim to being the only
town in the United States platted in the shape of a double horseshoe
with curving streets that were designed instead of just happening.
A
group of citizens dissatisfied with city life in Chicago in 1895 formed
what they called " The Plymouth Society of Chicago". It isn't
believed they were necessarily direct descendants of the Pilgrims who
landed in 1620 at what they called Plymouth Rock.
The
Plymouth Society of Chicago selected a committee to investigate the
irrigated Payette River Valley in the five-year-old state of Idaho, and
another site in Colorado, to be purchased for the colony. Meanwhile the
present city of New Plymouth was on the drawing boards in Chicago.
About
10 months later, in February of 1896, each colonist purchased 20 shares
of stock at $30 per share, which entitled him to 20 acres of land and a
town lot. He was to clear the land of sagebrush and plant fruit trees,
preferably apples.
The
town was platted with the horseshoe open to the north toward the
railroad and the river. This area was planned as an industrial zone, and
the acre tracts around the horseshoe were the residential lots.
The
homes were to built on the street side and the balance of the acre for
garden and pasture for the family cow and the driving team. Between the
two streets on the horseshoe or "boulevard" as it is still
called, the committee placed an 80-foot-wide park, approximately one
mile in length. In it was planted grass and shade trees. In the fall its
ash, maple, and elm trees turn almost violent shades of red and orange
and yellow, like a New England autumn.
Perhaps
that's what the New Plymouth Colony Company had in mind, in addition to
having a place for the children to play.
Plymouth
Avenue, the main street and principal business thoroughfare, was
surveyed (16 feet off the section line) down the center of the horseshoe
from the railroad on the north through the "Boulevard" on the
south.
The
community was at first called the New Plymouth Farm Village and for two
years was governed by a colony board of directors until it incorporated
as a village, dropping the last two words in the name.
One
can walk through that horseshoe park and look up through New England
deciduous trees where a cool breath sways the smaller limbs, and you see
the endless blue skies by looking almost straight up, the same skies
you've always seen.
But
in the overwhelming quietness, you know this would be a nice place to
live.
