![]() Many people who didn’t live in the rather affluent Highlands during the time period of the construction (1959-1961), felt angry that the hoity toity folks got a bomb shelter (as the bomb shelter was designed to save 1,000 people, but only those in the Highlands area), and they got to hide under desks. There was however, a lot of resentment throughout Boise created from the Bomb Shelter. The Boise Bomb Shelter would have greatly increased the fear of Communism, because not only did the construction imply that a bomb shelter would be needed in the future, but also the need to sell stock to neighborhood families at $100 a pop also showed the people of the Highlands area that we couldn’t fight the communists lying down, everybody needed to do their part. The shelter was constructed with funds ($122,000) from the Federal Civil Defense Administration, an agency founded during Truman’s presidency whose main focus was warning the public about the threats of Communism. Understandably so, as it was later unearthed in some Soviet documents, that Boise was a potential target if the nukes ever started flying. Around the time the US government decided to place intercontinental ballistic missiles in the Mountain Home Military base (only 50 miles away “as the missile flies” from Boise), citizens of the Highlands area of Boise formed Highlands Community Shelter Inc, an organization that aimed to get a community bomb shelter built in their neighborhood, the first of its kind in the nation. ![]() The Boise Bomb Shelter was constructed in 1961, during the Cold War, a time when there was a rampant fear of nuclear attack by our Soviet enemies. ![]()
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