Historical Fact #5 - Old Boonesville Shower House

N 42.31567        W 071.99432  

Elevation: 754'

The structure you see before you was built in 1957 as the Boonesville Shower House.  Like many of our buildings at Treasure Valley, it was funded by a grant from the George W. Magee Memorial Trust.

The building was one of two similar shower houses built around the same time, the other being the Packachoag Shower House on Duffy Road.  Only the concrete base of that structure remains, in a flat area before the road goes uphill to the High Mesa campsite.

Prior to these two shower houses, there may have been showers in the basement of East Lodge, though this remains uncertain.  It is more likely that people took a bar of soap down to the lake and washed up before, during, or after a swim, a practice that did not quite meet Board of Health standards.

This shower house was primitive by today’s standards, with a sink, urinal, no toilet, and a fenced-off propane fired hot water system.  The hot water system did not work well, and provided water that was alternately freezing to near-scalding. 

There was a single open changing area and a single block shower with six to eight shower heads.  There were no separate areas for campers, adult leaders, and staff.  The block shower (on the right hand side of the photo above) has since been torn down.

The Boonesville and Packachoag Shower Houses were replaced in 1974 by a large wood-frame shower house at the location of the current cement-block shower house (itself built in 1994).  The Boonesville Shower House has since served as a tent storage facility, the summer headquarters of the Adventure Trails program, and the Aquatics Storage Shed.

TVAA fact provided by Mike McQuaid on May 17, 2022