IDAHO PARK COULD BE NAMED FOR VARDIS FISHER: The October issue of the Idaho Center for the Book newsletter included excerpts of June columns by Tim Woodward of the Idaho Statesman advocating for a state park named for Idaho writer Vardis Fisher. The land, near Hagerman, includes a spring-fed lake and the burnt-out remains of Fisher’s house. Woodward quotes Boise State University Professor James McGuire: “When the literary history of Idaho is written, one of the real regrets people will have is that the state didn’t jump at the opportunity to save it and name a site there for him.” Idaho Center for the Book Director Tom Trusky would like to see a deck built on the Fisher house’s foundation overlooking the lake, making it an inspiring place for a summer writers’ workshop. The Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation wants to name the site after the Billingsley family, local pioneers. During the department’s open comment period about the park, 51 of 55 responses supported the Fisher name.
Fisher, who died in 1968, wrote 36 books and was credited with creating a new literature for the West. He wrote the Idaho guide for the Works Progress Administration (WPA) Writers’ Project during the 1930s. Fisher flummoxed D.C. bureaucrats when he finished his book first and announced it to the world. According to Trusky: “Fisher worked through Caxton's Printing in Caldwell, Idaho, and just ignored threats and exhortations from D.C. bureaucrats who ordered him to put on the literary brakes so the New York state guide would be first in the national series. The Idaho guide is probably 90 percent (if not 110 percent) Fisher. It’s wiry, full of evocative prose, beautifully written, well-researched and free of Chamber of Commerce purpled prose hucksterism. It arrived (first in the WPA series) to universal praise and became a model for all other state guides.”
The state’s Parks & Rec web site provides a "public comment summary to the Thousand Springs State Park master plan," which includes the Billingsley Creek area where Fisher's home was located. Some respondents lobby for the Fisher name along with interpretive programs on the author's life and work. Others argue against naming anything for Fisher. Perhaps feelings about the controversial author are still a bit raw. In his columns, Woodward sums it up this way: “Fisher was an abrasive iconoclast, which is probably why recognition has been so long in coming."
