A “boondoggle” is something you expect to hear about in connection with some wasteful, politically motivated project touted by some senator or representative in Washington, DC. It’s usually intended to provide public funds to the politician’s state or district, but doesn’t provide much benefit beyond that. One recent boondoggle — that in this case didn’t really get built — was a major bridge in Alaska to an island with only a handful of inhabitants. The bridge would have cost many millions, and provided a multi-lane highway to a place very few people needed or wanted to go. But building the bridge would have provided jobs.
“Boondoggle” is a uniquely American term, and first became widely known in 1935 when the New York Times published this headline: “$3,187,000 Relief is Spent to Teach Jobless to Play … Boon Doggles Made.” Note that the headline isn’t exactly saying that a project was a boondoggle; it’s talking about making something called a “boondoggle”.
Even though “boondoggle” was a pretty obscure word before the Times brought it some much-needed attention, it had been around for quite a while. And it was an actual thing. It’s a thing that’s still around today, even though nobody remembers what it used to be called.
“Boondoggle” appeared in another New York paper in 1929 — the New York Herald mentioned it in a story about the annual Boy Scouts Jamboree, which was held that year in England. Talking about the then Prince of Wales, the article said “The Prince also wore around his scout hat a “boondoggle,” which is a bright leather braided lanyard worn much in the manner of the hat cord used by the United States Army.”
Now, some people seem to have felt that the Prince of Wales wearing one of these gadgets on his hat at a Boy Scouts meeting already insured the “boondoggle” was well known. In 1931, the Daily Messenger, a newspaper in someplace called Canandaigua, New York, printed this: “The boondoggle, which leaped literally into fame overnight when it was introduced by Rochester Boy Scouts at the jamboree in England, is a braided lanyard on which various things such as whistles can be hung. So fascinating do the boys find it, that they have spent practically all their spare time on the work.”
That, by the way, is a clue about why the boondoggle was mentioned in that New York Herald article a couple of years prior; the boy scouts in question were from New York state. Speaking of which, Canandaigua is a town way out in the western part of New York, south of Lake Erie. There seems to be nothing interesting about it and no particular reason ever to visit, although they do have that lake. But there’s nothing like a big monument or impressive structure to make Canandaigua the kind of place people talk about visiting someday. In other words, what Canandaigua has always needed is a good boondoggle.
