Highlands
- Dec 4, 2024
- 10 min read
Updated: Mar 30
Before it was Boise's most sought-after foothills neighborhood, it was Slaughterhouse Gulch. The story of how it became The Highlands tells you everything about what postwar Boise wanted to be.
The area now called The Highlands was, within living memory, known by a different name. Slaughterhouse Gulch took its identity from the Idaho Provision and Packing Company's meatpacking operation, which sat near what is now the convergence of Harrison Boulevard, Hill Road, and Bogus Basin Road. Richard B. Smith's daughter, Shelley Eichmann, has recounted a conversation with a woman who lived her entire life on 15th Street, south of the gulch, who told her that when spring rains came, red water from the meatpacking operations would flow down into her basement.
The land itself belonged to the Smith family. Franklin B. Smith, a Boise pioneer schoolteacher and farmer, patented 160 acres in 1888 on what was then an arid, sagebrush-dotted hillside at the southern edge of the Boise Front. Sixty-seven years later, his grandson decided to build something on it.
Richard B. Smith was a local real estate agent and developer. In 1955, he and co-developers Fred Bagley, Ted Eberle, and Robert Kinsinger launched The Highlands project on his grandfather's land. Construction started in Highlands Units 1 and 2 that year. The name change from Slaughterhouse Gulch to The Highlands was deliberate, and Smith pushed the Scottish branding further than the street signs. He named the roads Wyndemere, Braemere, Hearthstone, Keldoon, Argyll, Afton, Selkirk, Heather, and Tartan. He had his real estate salesmen wear Royal Stewart plaid tartan jackets at work.
The Highlands was not the first postwar subdivision in the Boise foothills. That distinction likely belongs to Aldape Heights, platted by Joe and Flora Aldape in June 1946, a small Basque-developed neighborhood south of the Military Reserve that skeptics labeled "Aldape's Folly." J.R. Simplot Company began the development of Boise Heights in 1953, two years before Smith broke ground. What The Highlands represented was scale. Hundreds of residential lots were platted between 1955 and 1961, interspersed with commercial and institutional parcels, extending Boise's boundary outward and upward into terrain previously considered too steep, too dry, and too remote for residential development.
Smith stayed involved for decades. In 1971, the Idaho Statesman reported on the construction of the 500th home in the subdivision, by then incorporating housing styles that had evolved considerably since the 1950s. Smith continued to manage development into the early 2000s. The neighborhood he started on 160 acres of patented family land now encompasses more than 35 distinct subdivisions and a population approaching 5,000.
To sell the first phase, Smith needed a spectacle. He found one in a marketing concept credited to the Salt Lake City Home Builders Association, which had staged the first Parade of Homes in 1946. Boise had never held one. In 1956, Smith brought it to The Highlands, and it became the city's inaugural Parade.
Ten model homes were built on Crane Creek Road by local builders and suppliers who constructed, finished, and furnished each house. The event was publicized a month ahead in the Idaho Statesman. Advertised as a family outing, the Parade offered pony rides and clowns for children while their parents toured the homes. The Boise Junior Chamber of Commerce ran a refreshment stand. Hostesses were stationed at each house to demonstrate the modern conveniences. Realtors, builders, and interior designers worked together to introduce Boiseans to new homes built mainly in the popular Ranch style.
Al Sorensen, a Boise building contractor, was one of the ten participating builders. His firm, the A.T. Sorensen Construction Company, went on to build multiple homes in The Highlands, including at least two houses built to the same design on Highland View Drive, sold for mortgages in the low $20,000 range. The Parade's success in 1956 led directly to the second and third annual events in 1957 and 1958, which Ernest Day brought to the Country Club Manor subdivisions on the Bench. The concept that launched The Highlands also helped launch Hillcrest.
The Highlands houses were shaped by the land. Unlike the gridded neighborhoods closer to downtown or the flat subdivisions on the Bench, the foothills terrain forced lots into irregular shapes and varying elevations. Streets curved along the topography of Crane Creek and the surrounding hills, a deliberate departure from the gridiron planning that had defined Boise's earlier growth. The curvilinear layouts slowed traffic, minimized through access, and gave each lot a different relationship to grade, light, and views.
Many of the original homes were built from plans rather than custom-designed, but a number were drawn by architects. The houses followed the topography and were typically placed on large lots off cul-de-sacs. The predominant style was Ranch, in several variations, but the neighborhood also contains homes that belong to what the Idaho Architecture Project describes as "mid-century American Internationalism," with low-pitched or flat roofs, deep eaves, exposed beams, extensive glazing, and natural materials suited to the high-desert setting.
Glenn Buettner, who worked as an architect and chief engineer for Albertson's, designed his own home on Ranch Road. Completed in 1958, it incorporated pink Arizona sandstone, clean lines, a flat roof, exposed laminated beams, and an open floor plan that provided privacy from the street while maximizing rear views. Buettner had worked for International Bechtel in Saudi Arabia and for the Transarabian Pipeline Company in Beirut before returning to Boise in 1956. He brought an international perspective to a house on a cul-de-sac in the foothills.
Jedd Jones, of the Boise architectural firm Hummel, Hummel, and Jones, designed the Ethel Chapman House on Highland View Drive. Chapman was the president and owner of The Mode Ltd., a Boise department store. She had previously lived in a sandstone-and-half-timbered Tudor Revival home on Warm Springs Avenue. The house Jones designed for her in The Highlands, completed in 1964 on a $60,000 mortgage, was a striking departure, capitalizing on downtown views and the possibilities of modernist form. Jones was a highly sought residential designer with commissions across Boise's most prominent streets. His firm, Hummel, Hummel, and Jones, was a direct successor to Tourtelotte and Hummel, the practice that designed the Idaho State Capitol.
Steve M. Thomas, a Navy veteran who had served as an aircraft machinist in the Pacific, founded the Steve M. Thomas Construction Company in the early 1950s. He built numerous custom homes in The Highlands. His own house on Argyll Street was surrounded by several others he had also constructed. Thomas later moved into commercial work with Boise Cascade.
These are not the only names. But they are the ones the historical record preserves, and they represent the range of people who built The Highlands: an architect who had worked on pipelines in the Middle East, the designer of a department store magnate's modernist retreat, a Navy veteran who built his own street.
The bomb shelter is one of the most unusual facts about any residential neighborhood in the American West.
In 1961, with intercontinental ballistic missiles stationed at Mountain Home Air Force Base roughly fifty miles away, residents of The Highlands formed Highlands Community Shelter Inc. Each participating household contributed $100. The Federal Civil Defense Administration provided $122,000. The shelter, designed by local architect Edgar Jensen, was a steel-reinforced concrete box buried under a hillside, with a retaining wall at the front entrance and a rear entrance built into the slope. It was engineered to hold 1,000 people, and it was the first community bomb shelter of its kind in the nation.
The project generated resentment across Boise. Non-residents objected to the idea that an affluent foothills neighborhood was getting a federally funded shelter while the rest of the city was told to hide under desks. Glenn Buettner, the architect and shelter organization member, was quoted defending the members-only policy without apology: "We mean business when we say this shelter is for members only."
The shelter was never used for its intended purpose. It found a second life as the temporary clubhouse for what would become Crane Creek Country Club, where charter members gathered for drinks and storytelling before the permanent clubhouse was completed in 1969. The bomb shelter still stands.
Crane Creek Country Club grew directly out of The Highlands development. In the early 1960s, a group of local golf enthusiasts organized a club on land made available by Richard B. Smith. It was initially called the Highlands Country Club. Fresno, California, golf course architect Bob Baldock was hired to design the course. The name was changed to Crane Creek Country Club before the grand opening in 1963, taking its name from the creek that runs through the property rather than the neighborhood's other historical name.
Charter members included associates of the Morrison Knudsen Construction Company, who volunteered their time and their company's heavy equipment to build the course. The club has had only four head golf professionals in its history. The course plays 7,071 yards from the tips, par 73, with bent-grass fairways and greens, treelined holes, and a canyon that winds through the back nine. Crane Creek holds designation as a Certified Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary, a status achieved by only 10 percent of clubs nationally. The course was substantially renovated over the winter of 2003–2004, and architect David Druzisky completed further redesign work in 2017. The club is currently nearing completion of a major addition including a new dining area, fitness center, golf simulators, and locker rooms.
Crane Creek is a private, members-only club. Its presence at the center of The Highlands is not incidental to the neighborhood's real estate market. Course-adjacent lots in newer subdivisions like Highlands Cove, currently under development by Conner Construction, are listing at prices that reflect the proximity.
The Highlands today is not a single subdivision. It is a collection of more than 35 distinct neighborhoods and sub-developments, built across seven decades, spread primarily on both sides of Bogus Basin Road northeast of the North End. The entry point is the convergence of Bogus Basin Road, Harrison Boulevard, and Hill Road, where Harrison Boulevard becomes Bogus Basin Road and the city gives way to the foothills.
The original Highlands Unit, east of Bogus Basin Road and south of Curling Drive, contains the neighborhood's concentration of 1950s and 1960s mid-century homes, the Ranch-style and modernist houses from the first phases of development. This is where buyers looking specifically for intact postwar architecture will find it. Current listings for original-era homes in this zone typically fall in the $700,000 to $900,000 range for houses of roughly 2,000 to 2,400 square feet.
El Pelar Estates, located between Cartwright Road and Simplot Hill, was built from 1978 to the early 1990s and is the most architecturally varied section, with homes averaging around 2,800 square feet. Highlands Hackberry, developed beginning in 1988, offers some of the best views in the area, particularly of the Crane Creek golf course, with homes averaging around 3,800 square feet. Hackberry Ranch, the newest section, began construction in 2014. Highlands Cove, adjacent to Crane Creek, is actively selling custom lots.
According to Redfin data from spring 2025, the median sale price across the Highlands neighborhood was $850,000, with homes selling in an average of 11 days. The neighborhood is rated "very competitive," scoring 82 out of 100. Active single-family listings currently range from roughly $700,000 for a three-bedroom mid-century home to nearly $5 million for new foothills construction. The median listing price for land in the neighborhood is $1.48 million.
For comparison, the citywide Boise median in February 2026 stood at $474,000. The Highlands operates in a substantially higher tier, reflecting its foothills setting, lot sizes, view premiums, and proximity to both Crane Creek Country Club and the Ridge to Rivers trail system.
One risk factor that buyers should weigh: Redfin's environmental data shows that 100 percent of all properties in the Highlands carry some risk of wildfire impact over the next 30 years. The neighborhood's foothills location, an asset in almost every other respect, places it in an extreme wildfire risk zone.
The Highlands is not a designated historic district. Like Hillcrest on the Bench, preservation here is voluntary. Many houses in the neighborhood have turned 50 years old, the age at which the National Park Service will consider buildings for listing in the National Register of Historic Places. Good examples of mid-century architecture retaining their original integrity exist throughout the original Highlands Unit. But no overlay protects them from demolition, and newer construction, including homes that local observers have described as McMansions, has been built in the neighborhood alongside the mid-century stock.
The tension is real. The Highlands contains some of the best-preserved mid-century residential architecture in Boise and some of the most aggressive new infill in the foothills. Preservation Idaho's Idaho Modern program, which advocates for awareness of mid-century architecture statewide, has identified the neighborhood as significant. But without a formal historic designation, the character of the original Highlands Unit depends entirely on the decisions of individual owners.
The schools serving the neighborhood are among the strongest in the Boise School District. Highlands Elementary, located at 3434 Bogus Basin Road, serves pre-K through 6th grade with approximately 280 to 311 students. It is ranked 6th out of all Idaho elementary schools by U.S. News, with 77 percent of students proficient or above in math and 82 percent in reading, both figures substantially above state and district averages. The school was rebuilt in 2019 with new classrooms, a cafeteria, a full gymnasium, a library, a playground, and a recreation field. After-school programs include STEM-Lego classes, art programs, and a competitive biking team. The feeder pattern continues to North Junior High and Boise Senior High School.
Crane Creek is named for Dr. Charles H. Crane, who located a farm just north of the present-day intersection of Harrison Boulevard and Hill Road in the 1860s. The creek itself runs from the foothills through the neighborhood, partly underground behind the commercial strip at the base of the subdivision. That commercial cluster at the convergence of the three roads includes Highlands Hollow Brewhouse, Boise's oldest microbrewery; Hawkins Pac-Out, a burger-and-breakfast drive-through that has operated since the early days of Bogus Basin; and several outdoor sports retailers that serve the ski traffic heading up the mountain.
Bogus Basin Ski Resort sits 19 miles north on Bogus Basin Road, roughly a 30-minute drive from the neighborhood entrance. The Ridge to Rivers trail system and Hull's Gulch Reserve are immediately accessible. Simplot Hill, the site of the governor's mansion and a popular sledding spot, is adjacent. Camel's Back Park and Hyde Park are a short walk or bike ride south. Downtown Boise is about 15 minutes away.
The Highlands was built for people who wanted to live close to the city but above it, in houses that sat with the land rather than on top of it, on streets that curved because the terrain demanded it. That Richard B. Smith started with 160 acres of his grandfather's homestead, renamed a slaughterhouse drainage after the Scottish Highlands, dressed his salesmen in tartan, and staged the city's first Parade of Homes on a road named for a nineteenth-century farmer's creek tells you something about the ambition behind the project. That the neighborhood is still being built into, still attracting buyers who want foothills lots and mid-century character and a golf course designed on land donated by the same developer, tells you that the ambition worked.
The Highlands is not finished. It has been under continuous development for seventy years, and new lots are still selling. What holds it together is not completion. It is the original logic of the place: the topography, the curving streets, the mature canopy that transformed sagebrush hillside into something that feels, against all geographic odds, lush. The mid-century homes that started it, the ones from the first Parade and the years that followed, are still the neighborhood's best argument. They were built for a version of Boise that was just beginning to imagine itself as something more than a small western city.
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