| Abstract |
In 1890, four Idahoans set the state for the nation's current interest in geothermally heating buildings and homes. These pioneers of hot water prospecting were W.H. Ridenbaugh, H.B. Eastman, Timothy Regan, and J.W. Cunningham. The east end of the Boise Valley had long been recognized for the peculiar plot of land that always seemed to be warm and free of snow in the coldest of winter months. There the team of hot water prospectors drilled two, four hundred feet deep, six inch wells. the reward for such an imaginative and globally unprecedented effort was a gushing daily output of 800,000 gallons of 172°C water, and what may soon become the largest direct use geothermal system in the national |