These tucked-away wild places could easily have been destroyed or developed—but they weren't, thanks to The Nature Conservancy. Outdoorsman Hal Herring takes a closer look at three natural treasures worth a visit. Driving east on I-84 from Boise, past the fields filled fencerow to fencerow with irrigated corn, wheat, beets and potatoes, past the large-scale hog and dairy cattle operations, a nature-oriented traveler might suspect that there's not much of interest in Idaho's Snake River plain. The traveler would be wrong. Look north, beyond the billiard-table plain, and you see a jumble of mountains, snow clad and rugged and wild. That's the Lost River Range, the birthplace of the Big Lost River, Little Lost River and other major waters. Those rivers emerge from the mountains onto the volcanic stones of the plain and then immediately disappear.
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