Historic Foothills military cemetery holding ~247 Fort Boise-era burials; relocated to its current Cottonwood Canyon site after the 1906 flood and designated a historic site in 1947.
1101 Mountain Cove Rd, Boise, ID 83702
Age
All Ages
Cost
Free
Free, public city historic site. No tour fee; daytime-only access expected for a small Foothills military cemetery.
Access
Limited Access
Foothills site at the mouth of Cottonwood Canyon. Unpaved access in places; uneven ground; many unmarked or weathered graves.
Equipment
Photos OK
Est. 1906 · Holds ~247 Fort Boise-era military burials · Original Boise Barracks cemetery relocated after the 1906 flood · 166 graves relocated 1906; reinterments continued through 1913 · Civil War veterans, Oregon Trail dead, and military dependents interred · Designated a historic site by City of Boise deed in 1947 · Three additional suspected Civil War veterans interred in 1998
The Fort Boise Military Cemetery, also called Cottonwood Cemetery, holds the burials of soldiers and dependents from Fort Boise and the associated Government Island posts from the mid-1860s through the early twentieth century. The original burial ground was located at the Boise Barracks on the floor of the Boise River valley.
In 1906 a flood at the original site damaged graves and washed away wooden markers. Additional remains were uncovered during target practice in the years that followed, prompting the U.S. Army to relocate the cemetery to its current Foothills site at the mouth of Cottonwood Canyon, approximately half a mile north of the original Barracks-floor location. The relocation moved 166 known burials initially, with additional reinterments continuing through 1913. Three more bodies, suspected to be Civil War veterans, were interred at the site in 1998.
The cemetery is now estimated to hold approximately 247 burials, including Civil War veterans, young children of military families who died at Fort Boise, and individuals who died on the Oregon Trail and were originally interred at the Boise Barracks before the 1906 move. Many graves at the current site are unmarked due to the loss of wooden markers in the 1906 flood and during the relocation process.
The City of Boise received the cemetery deed in 1947, with the deed stipulation that the property be maintained as a historic site preserving its natural early-twentieth-century appearance. Boise Parks and Recreation operates the cemetery from the Royal Boulevard administration office.
The site sits at the base of the Boise Foothills near the Military Reserve open space, making it accessible from Foothills trails as well as from Mountain Cove Road.
Sources
Fort Boise Military Cemetery's paranormal lore is collected by Idaho Haunted Houses, Haunted Places, the CemSites cemetery-blog network, and the Boise City Ghost Hunters forum. The reports cluster into three patterns.
The first and most-reported is apparitions of children. Multiple visitor accounts describe figures of children among the headstones, sometimes described as playing hide-and-seek among the markers. The visiting investigator base reads these reports against the documented presence of military-family children's graves at the cemetery.
The second is a recurring report of a woman's apparition, who according to multiple retellings has also been seen at a nearby school. The specific school is not consistently named across sources; treat this detail as folkloric rather than as a documented cross-property report.
The third pattern is environmental: visitors describe an unsettling sense of being watched, moving shadows in peripheral vision, disembodied voices, and an oppressive feeling at the cemetery, particularly toward dusk. The CemSites entry on the property frames these as the cemetery's most-reported phenomena.
Local lore connects the high count of unmarked graves at the site - a documented consequence of the 1906 flood and the loss of wooden markers - with the reported activity, framing the dead as not fully laid to rest. HauntBound presents this as folkloric reading and notes that the unmarked-grave count is a flood-damage artifact, not evidence of supernatural causation.
Notable Entities
Walk the small ~247-burial historic military cemetery in Cottonwood Canyon, including Civil War veterans, soldiers' dependents, and unmarked early-Idaho-Territory graves. Treat as a quiet memorial site.
Combine the cemetery visit with Foothills trails and Military Reserve open space. The cemetery is one of Boise's oldest surviving military sites and is recognized as a 1947-designated historic site.
Every HauntBound history is researched from documented sources. We clearly separate verified historical fact from paranormal folklore.
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