If you poll Americans who don’t live there about the state of Idaho, chances are the answers will be comically simplistic. “Potatoes, right?” Some who recall their fifth grade educations could tell you that the capital was Boise. But beyond that? I’m guessing you wouldn’t get much.
I pride myself in my knowledge of history, and my answer wouldn’t have been a lot more than those. How was Idaho formed? It has a weird shape, after all, in an era in which state lines were drawn as straight as possible. When did it become a state and why was Boise chosen as the capital? Did anything of note happen between then and now that might affect how Idaho has progressed and its identity? I knew nothing of any of these.
So today, let’s delve a bit into the history of Idaho, and how one can explore it from the state’s capital and largest city, Boise.
Our story begins all the way back in 1863, when President Abraham Lincoln signed an act creating Idaho territory, carved out of the area of Washington and Dakota territories. The town of Boise was founded in the same year, as gold was discovered in the area. But the new territory included much of what would also be Wyoming and Montana, and had its capital at Lewiston, a few hundred miles north, at the confluence of the Snake and Clearwater Rivers. The total population of Idaho territory at the time of its creation was about 17,000.
(I realize that I am skipping over the native history of the area here. That is not meant to minimize it, and actually the Idaho State Museum, which we will talk about later, has a truly wonderful series of short animations of native creation stories from the region, which I can’t recommend highly enough. But to me, that history deserves its own dedicated article or set of articles, and I’m not able to do it justice here based on the experiences I had. I do intend one day to write about the Nez Perce people – at least – from elsewhere in the state, but it will have to wait for another trip.)
In 1868, the boundaries of what would become the state of Idaho were finalized, with largely straight lines on the west and south, as well as the southeast, but a boundary established in the east by tracing one of the sub-ranges of the Rocky Mountains, hence the jagged border with what would become Montana. It is that decision, using the mountains (which makes sense as there were no roads or rail lines through them back in the 1860s) that left Idaho with its narrow panhandle in the north.
But in the meantime, in 1864, the capital moved from Lewiston to the growing city of Boise. And that sparked some drama. As with many gold rush territories, miners and the support needed to feed, house, and entertain them, soon outnumbered the population that had existed. And with that came voting power in the territorial legislature, who voted to move the capital south to Boise. Northerners were displeased, but with no territorial Supreme Court to help, there was nothing they could do… except lock the documents and the territorial seal in a safe to keep these necessary means of governance in Lewiston. Well, they were stolen from there in the middle of the night, and taken down to Boise. End of debate…