The Cottonwood Creek Daylighting Project in Boise, Idaho, creates a unique opportunity to place habitat restoration in an urban setting. Cottonwood Creek is currently buried in a flume in Julia Davis Park. Once daylighted, Cottonwood Creek will provide fisheries habitat and endless educational and recreational opportunities in a high visibility location in a popular city park across the river from a major university. The project is expected to:

• Reestablish connectivity and a confluence zone between Cottonwood Creek and the Boise River;
• Create rearing habitat for rainbow and brown trout and whitefish;
• Increase flood capacity of Cottonwood Creek, currently constrained by the size of the culvert;
• Serve as another project in what is shaping up as one of the most significant trout habitat restoration initiatives sponsored by Trout Unlimited in an urban setting;
• Provide educational opportunities as part of TU's efforts in the Boise metro area for the general public, K-12 school children, undergraduate, graduate students, and communicate the importance of small and intermittent streams.

The Ted Trueblood Chapter of Trout Unlimited was awarded a grant from the national Trout Unlimited Embrace A Stream program in 2003 to provide seed money develop a plan for daylighting Cottonwood Creek. This early money will leverage the planning and partnership building into on-the-ground action, possibly by 2009.

The Cottonwood Creek Daylighting Project will restore and reconnect the last 440 ft of Cottonwood Creek where it enters the Boise River in Julia Davis Park in downtown Boise. The additional habitat will support trout spawning, rearing, and over-wintering fish habitat, all of which are limiting to the river fishery. Julia Davis Park is managed by the City of Boise. This project is designated as a priority project in the City of Boise's Boise River Management and Master Plan. Trout Unlimited participated on the Steering Committee that helped the city write this plan in 1999. This plan enhances the management of the Boise River Greenbelt, a nationally recognized river and parkland protection effort that was initiated over 30 years ago. Subsequently, the master plan for Julia Davis Park was adopted in 2002 and includes the daylighting project.

The aerial photos below illustrate the location of the existing buried flume (dashed yellow lines). The flume follows a direction running along a cul-de-sac in the east end of the park. The cul-de-sac is slated for removal, making for a logical location for a daylighted stream. Elevation contours for the park are also shown. In the upper right hand corner of the photo, just east of Broadway Avenue, the overflow for the flume is visible. The intersection in the photo experiences around 30,000 cars per day. Broadway Ave. handles the north-south traffic while the five lane-wide Myrtle Street directs traffic to the southeast. Whether or not they realize it, thousands of people will see Cottonwood Creek be restored to a stream.

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Cottonwood Creek drains an 8,000 acre watershed of the Boise Front north and east of downtown Boise. At the point the creek meets the valley floor and the city, it is routed through a flume for about one mile in length to the Boise River. It is the final 450 ft of flume that appears feasible for a daylighting project underneath Julia Davis Park near the intersection of Broadway Avenue and Myrtle Street in downtown Boise because it is in a public park. Flows in Cottonwood Creek generally range from less than 1 cfs to 40 cfs in a normal water year. This chart shows the recorded flows as measured at a USGS gage in Cottonwood Creek in the watershed above town. Click here to observe current flows. Peak flow is in the early spring as the watershed is a low elevation area (highest elevation is less than 5,500 MSL). Recent watershed rehabilitation efforts and constructed floodwater retention settling ponds function to improve water quality and remove sediment from the stream prior to its being routed to the flume.