Something’s been missing from Boise’s skyline for the past couple of weeks – something big, bright and patriotic. It’s the giant American flag that long has flown over the hilltop home of the late J.R. Simplot. Now, a bare, tall flagpole stands a lonely guard where the flag long waved. But a Simplot spokesman says the flag will be back; it’s just been taken down temporarily while some work is being done at the site. The work has caused disruptions to power, and Ken Dey, Simplot spokesman, said, “When they get some power back up there, they’ll put the flag back up, because they want to have it illuminated at night.”

The landmark flag flew even when the Simplot family donated the home to the state in 2004 as a governor’s residence – on condition that the flag continue to fly. After maintaining the home and its 36 acres of hillside lawns for several years but not seeing any Idaho governor move in, the state gave the home back to the family in 2013. (Current Gov. Butch Otter, who lives at his own 70-acre ranch in Star, declined to move into the home of his ex-father-in-law.)

Simplot, a self-made billionaire who died in 2008 at the age of 99, has a new Boise landmark rising in his honor: JUMP, or Jack’s Urban Meeting Place, a center for arts, performance, education and public events that opened last month in downtown Boise, next to the still-rising new headquarters of the J.R. Simplot Co.

By the way, Idaho is one of just a handful of states with no official governor’s mansion, and there’s a long and tortured history behind that. I wrote about that back in 2012; you can read my full story here at spokesman.com.