see Ballantine Wool wagons at trough for historic view
"Historic Sweet" (sign on south side of the Syringa Club building)
"On August 15, 1876, Andrew McQuade acquired an early homestead in Squaw Creek Valley. The property eventually became the community of Sweet. The town took its name from an early postmaster, Ezekiel Sweet.
"Following a gold rush in 1902 the town began to prosper. Merchants, ranchers and farmers were able to provide food and supplies to miners in the Thunder Mountain mining region, northeast of Cascade (Valley County). The town also supplied goods to loggers at the three to four sawmills in Dry Buck, northeast of Sweet (Boise County).
"Sweet soon had a bank, stores, hotels, liveries, a newspaper, church school, two blacksmith shops, two lodge halls and three saloons.
"Major fires in 1922 and 1925 destroyed most of the older buildings in the town. Remaining structures eligible for listing in the National Register of Historic Places are the Methodist Church and parsonage, the William Talley barn, Williams Saloon and the McQuade homestead."
(sign erected by the Gem County Historical Preservation Commission)
Photos
Ballantine Wool wagons, "Ballantine wool from Ola. Feed store owned by Frank Noland. Frank and James Noland Sr, Sweet, standing on porch." -- Photo courtesy of Gem County Historical Society and Museum. "The sheep boom took place in the 1880's as the railroads were constructed. The census of 1890 showed 357,712 sheep. . . The sheep industry reached its greatest growth in 1910 when the census counted 2,418,000 head in Idaho. In the 1950's the sheep industry began a downhill slide . . Virtually all sheep in Idaho utilize the forage on the federal lands." - Idaho Almanac, 1977
Street Scene, On the left: Sweet Bank, Talley Store, Woody Hotel. Photo courtesy of Gem County Historical Society and Museum.
Woody Hotel & Talley Store
Sweet school students, c. 1900
Methodist Church, by Kennie Lyn Klingback
Sweet Resources
Off-site links: Syringa Hall at Idaho Heritage.
Nellie Ireton Mills, "All Along the River/Territorial and Pioneer Days on the Payette." Privately printed for Payette Radio Limited, 1963. Index at Payette County, idgenweb.
Boise County Sentinel at Salmon Public Library, 1912 & 1916, published at Sweet; plus other publications
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