Fish Tales: A Hundred Years of Hatcheries

The Idaho Historical Museum in Boise will take you back to what some might call the Good Old Days with "Fish Tales: A Hundred Years of Hatcheries," the featured exhibit that continues through Free Fishing Day, June 9. The display showcases a century of hatchery and fish stocking operations, an important part of the history of the Idaho Department of Fish and Game. "It's who we are," said Sharon Clark of the department's fisheries bureau. "The Department of Fish and Game is such a unique agency anyway." In 1907 the first state-owned hatchery opened its doors at Hay Spur in central Idaho to produce trout for nearby waters. Now the state has 21 hatcheries and a rich history of producing fish for anglers all over the state. The museum exhibit evolved from a small display of artifacts put together by Fish and Game employee Mick Hoover to decorate the "feed room" of the Mackay Hatchery, north of Arco. Among those treasures was an old postcard featuring a pack string of horses and mules hauling milk cans full of tiny fish to Idaho alpine lakes. This inspired Hoover to put out a call to other hatcheries in search of one of those antique milk cans. He never uncovered a milk can, but he did find a wealth of artifacts, documents, photos and memoirs that evolved into the exhibit on display this month. A featured item, which will be shown intermittently outside the building, is a restored 1957 Chevrolet half-ton truck. This pickup was purchased new by Fish and Game and assigned to the Sandpoint and Hagerman hatcheries. It served to stock fish, as a feed truck, and had a fish pump mounted on the rear to load the large fish tankers. In 2002, the Dehryl A. Dennis Professional-Technical Education Center in Boise restored the exterior of the truck as a student project at no expense to Fish and Game. Mounted in the back of the truck is a restored 1940s-era fish tank, recovered from a ranch near the Mackay State Fish Hatchery. It is most likely the department's first slide-in pickup fish tank. A 1968 Salem Boat Works wooden drift boat and homemade trailer on display inside the museum is identical to the 12 boats the department bought for research on the large rivers of the state. It is on loan for the display from a private individual. Also featured in the Fish and Game display is historical aquaculture equipment, designed and built out of necessity at the fish hatcheries. The collection of equipment and historical photographs chronicle 100-year-old techniques for spawning and egg collecting, egg care until hatching, transporting fish eggs, fish feeding and diet development, and the eventual planting of mature fish via horseback, backpack, truck, boat, airplane and helicopter. But before locations could be chosen for stocking, habitat suitability and water quality testing was performed with some of the equipment represented in the display. Visitors can see historically significant items related to the infancy of the department, such as the 1899 proclamation by Gov. Frank Steunenberg appointing Charles Arbuckle as the first state game warden, and thus creating the department. A document embosser, more than 100 years old, shows the department's seal. Previously unseen photos include a 1908 warden conference in Island Park and a 1916 group picture in Warden Leroy Jones' Statehouse office. A hand-written fish stocking ledger itemizes individual fish plants from 1913 through 1935 when the public did most of the stocking. For information about the exhibit, call the Idaho Historical Museum at 208-334-2120 or visit www.idahohistory.net/museum.html or http://fishandgame.idaho.gov/cms/fish/hatcheries/history/.