Lowman, Idaho


Lowman is a small unincorporated rural census-designated place in the western United States, located in Boise County, Idaho. It is nestled along the north bank of the South Fork of the Payette River in the central part of the state, at an elevation of above sea level. As of the 2010 census, its population was 42.
Eighty miles from Boise on State Highway 21, the "Ponderosa Pine Scenic Byway," Lowman is at the junction with the "Banks-Lowman Highway"; now designated Highway 2512A. It is the "Wildlife Canyon Scenic Byway," it vertically descends with the whitewater of the South Fork to its confluence with the North Fork at Banks, the junction with State Highway 55, the "Payette River Scenic Byway."
The "Highway to Heaven" trail, stretching more than from Idaho's capital of Boise, is the only mountain passage in the West that begins from a major city. The trail winds from 8th Street in Boise and climbs the Boise River, past the Lucky Peak Dam. Sagebrush gives way to gentle pine slopes leading to historic Idaho City, then over Mores Creek Summit at and switches back down to Lowman. The route then climbs with the South Fork of the Payette River up and over Banner Summit at to Stanley, where it meets State Highway 75, just northeast of the Sawtooths.
The community was named for a homesteader, Nathaniel Winfield Lowman, from Polk County, Iowa, who settled there in 1907.
Lowman is in a geothermally active region. Natural hot springs surface in the middle of the community as well as in many other places in the surrounding mountains.
Lowman is notable for having a one-room school, one of only a couple hundred still in use in the US.
A devastating wildfire ravaged the area around Lowman in 1989; it destroyed over and 26 structures, but without injuries or fatalities.
Lowman has an area of ; is land, and is water.

Demographics

Notable residents

This climatic region is typified by large seasonal temperature differences, with warm to hot summers and cold winters. According to the Köppen Climate Classification system, Lowman has a humid continental climate, abbreviated "Dfb" on climate maps.

Transportation