IDAHO
IDAHO. Few states are as dramatically differentiated, both geographically and culturally, as Idaho. According to the 2000 census, just 1,293,953 people inhabited its 82,751 square miles, or 15.6 people per square mile. Idaho stretches 479 miles from north to south. It has eighty mountain ranges, and at 5,000 feet above sea level, is the fifth highest state in the Union. Forests cover 41 percent of the state and 82 percent of land in the north, and the state receives 100 million acre-feet of water annually in the form of rain and snow, to supply 16,000 miles of rivers and streams. The most important tributary is the Snake River, which flows for 1,000 miles before draining into the Columbia. Culturally, the state is divided between the Mormon southeast, the new high-tech industries of Boise and the southwest, and the north, formerly devoted to mining and lumbering, and now working to develop tourist attractions.
Indians and Trappers
Native American settlement in Idaho was split between the Shoshones of the Great Basin in the south, who had access to the resources of the Snake and Boise Rivers with their fish and game, and the Nez Perce and Coeur d'Alene tribes in the north. The arrival of the Lewis and Clark Expedition in 1805 preceded the entry of trappers and traders into the region. In 1810, Fort Henry was erected as the first American habitation. A trade war was pursued between the Hudson's Bay Company and independent American trappers, which lasted into the 1840s. Fort Hall and Fort Boise were established as part of this competition, but ultimately came to be staging posts on the Oregon Trail. The rise of Oregon "fever" in the 1840s led 53,000 settlers to take the trail in the next two decades.
Miners and Mormons
Idaho Territory had no formal settlements until the incorporation of Franklin in 1860. In the north, however, there were a set of mining camps, which were illegally established on the Nez Perce Indian reservation to service the diggings at Orofino Creek and Pierce City. The gold rush proved alluring to depression-hit farmers, and the territory produced $3 million of gold dust by 1861. Such communities were unstable and had a large proportion of saloons and theaters. Mormon pioneers made their first permanent settlement in Idaho in the 1860s as part of Brigham Young's plans for colonization. Theirs was a much harder existence but a more stable community life, centered on family and religion, with homesteads clustered around a ward meetinghouse and supported by cooperative organizations.
State Formation
In 1853, Washington Territory was separated from Oregon and the future Idaho Territory was divided between them. Six years later, Oregon became a state and southern Idaho was added to Washington Territory. Idaho Territory was created in 1863, with only 32,342 residents. Congress removed portions of the future territories of Montana and
Wyoming in 1868, but Idaho was still too sprawling to be well administered. The north fought to be annexed by Washington Territory in the 1880s, but President Grover Cleveland vetoed a bill to separate it. The territorial legislature propitiated the north by locating the state university at Moscow. In 1889, Idaho held a special convention and drafted a constitution that Congress approved, and a year later it became a state.
Developing the Land
There was little active government in Idaho during the Civil War, and many Confederate sympathizers and migrants from the border states settled in the region. In 1864, the legislature moved the capital to Boise, a site with much fertile land and a mild climate. Boise became a trade and transportation hub and two-thirds of Idaho farms were located in the Boise area by 1870. Cattle raising became common in the 1860s, and farming succeeded mining as the principal occupation in the 1870s, although it was as dependent as mining on outside financing. With irrigation, the Snake River valley became capable of development, and in the northern region of the Palouse, wheat growing was developed on a grand scale.
Silver Mining and Lumber Production
Lead and silver strikes at Wood River (1880) and the Coeur d'Alene (1883-1884) produced a new source of wealth for Idaho. The town of Hailey near Wood River had Idaho's first electric lighting and first telephone service. Initial placer methods were succeeded by hard-rock mining financed by outside investors, most notably the Sunshine Mine in the Coeur d'Alene, with the largest recorded silver production in the world. Eastern and Californian demand for timber spurred the creation of the Clearwater Timber Company by Frederick Weyerhaeuser in 1900, and by 1903, most private timberland was in the hands of the big timber companies. In 1904, production had reached 350 million board feet and by 1925, 1,100 million board feet.
Building a Transport Network
Mining, lumbering, and wheat growing companies required an effective railroad network to transport their products. In 1882, Pocatello, in the southeast, became a major railroad center, with a complex of railroad shops that was more unionized and ethnically diverse than other parts of the state, and far less Mormon than most towns in the east. The expansion of the network continued into the twentieth century, and by 1918, there were 2,841 miles of track in Idaho. Railroad stations were a matter of community pride and stimulated town growth, even though they also created dependency on the railroad timetable.
Immigration and Anti-Mormonism
The changes of the 1880s brought newcomers to Idaho. These included the Basques, who were known to work as shepherds but often worked in mining and dam construction; they developed their own hotels and boardinghouse culture. The 1880s also saw the rise of anti-Mormonism, because of the perception of the Latter-day Saints as outsiders who tended to vote as a bloc for the Democratic Party. Under the leadership of Fred Dubois, a campaign was waged against the Mormon practice of polygamy, and the legislature passed a measure in 1882 that barred Latter-day Saints from voting, holding office, or serving on a jury, although most of these restrictions were abandoned in 1893.
The Politics of the 1890s
During the 1890s, miners' support for silver monetization made Populism a political force in Idaho. Organized labor grew rapidly, and in 1907, there were forty-five unions with 2,240 members. In the Coeur d'Alene in 1892 and 1899, there were violent attacks on mine property. In 1899, Governor Frank Steunenberg declared martial law and many miners were imprisoned. In 1905, Harry Orchard planted a bomb at Steunenberg's home that killed the governor. The subsequent kidnap and prosecution of miners' leader William Haywood in 1906 set the stage in the following year for one of the more colorful trials of the century, with Senator William Borah as the prosecutor and the radical lawyer Clarence Darrow for the defense.
Idaho in the Progressive Era
Violent protest was not, however, the only means of bringing about reform. During the 1890s, Boise's Columbian Club created the first traveling library in the West. In 1900, there were about fifteen reform clubs in Idaho that pushed for progressive legislation. Although the Republican Party was strong in the state, Idaho saw the introduction of the direct primary, initiative, referendum, recall, and workers' compensation, as well as prohibition. Equally important was the irrigation of the Snake River plain, with the assistance of the federal Reclamation Bureau. By 1915, over 19 million acres (about 35 percent of state) had been formed into twenty-two national forests. Such assistance, however, created a problem of dependence on federal resources and technological expertise. The rise of irrigated land led to the "selling" of Idaho in the East by communities and railroads. Tourism was also pushed through such instruments as National Geographic.
Idaho in the 1920s
During World War I, Idaho contributed 20,000 men to the armed forces; produced food, minerals, and timber for aircraft; and purchased many war bonds and savings stamps. The state also fought the syndicalist Industrial Workers of the World, who were campaigning in the mining towns and lumbering camps for an eight-hour day and higher wages. Governor Moses Alexander asked for federal troops to quell unrest in the towns of Wallace and Lewiston, and the state legislature passed a criminal syndicalism law. The agricultural depression of 1921 prompted some out-migration and twenty-seven banks failed in the 1920s. Nevertheless, Idaho completed a basic network of highways and electric railroads for a number of communities, including Boise. Motorization spurred the creation of all-weather roads and then larger schools, and caused the demise of many remote villages. A north-south highway was completed by 1920, making possible direct communication between the two halves of the state. During the 1920s, Idaho experienced a farm revolt that led to the creation of the Progressive Party, which elected candidates in 1922 and controlled three county governments. But the Republican Party remained dominant.
The Great Depression
Of the Pacific Northwest states, Idaho suffered most during the Great Depression. Farm prices fell 44 percent between 1929 and 1930; the Snake River plain experienced severe drought and declining production through the early 1930s; and average income fell 49.3 percent between 1929 and 1932. The Democrat C. Ben Ross was elected governor in 1930 and Idaho voted strongly for the Democrats in 1932. The state was fifth in the nation in New Deal per capita spending, with programs for construction, electricity in the countryside, and agricultural relief. The development of hydroelectric power by the federal government was a serious political issue in the Pacific Northwest, but Idaho proved less keen on the idea of public power than Washington and Oregon, and the legislature rejected public utility districts in 1937.
World War II and the Transformation of Idaho
During World War II, 60,000 Idahoans—11 percent of the state's population—served in the armed forces. Air bases were established at Boise and Pocatello, while the largest inland naval base was located at Sandpoint, training 293,381 sailors. After the war, the Strategic Air Command maintained Mountain Home Air Force Base for refueling, while on the Snake River, the federal government built the National Reactor Testing Station with fifty-two reactors, which produced the first electricity from nuclear power in 1951.
Postwar Reconstruction
After 1945, Idaho saw the rise of manufacturing and of firms like Morrison-Knudsen, a construction company that had worked on Hoover Dam, Albertson's grocery and drugs, one of the largest retail outlets in the United States, and the J. R. Simplot Company, with interests in food processing, fertilizers, and ranching. Other employers included Boise Cascade, one of the nation's largest producers of plywood; Micron Technology, a semiconductor company founded in 1978; and Hewlett Packard. The federal Idaho National Engineering Laboratory employed 10,000 people in the early 1990s or 5 percent of the state's jobs. Boise emerged as a major northwestern city, experienced suburban growth, and retained its small-town ambiance. It was the only city in the central Northwest with more than 100,000 residents. Big growth in the 1970s was followed by a recession in the early 1980s, especially in mining and timber. Resource-based communities turned to tourism for salvation and a large inmigration took place, mostly from California, during the late 1980s and early 1990s. During the 1990s, the state's population grew 28.5 percent.
Politics in the Late Twentieth Century
Despite holding the governorship from 1971 to 1994 and producing influential figures like Senator Frank Church, the Democratic Party became increasingly irrelevant in Idaho. The Republicans held the majority of seats in the state legislature from 1961 to the beginning of the twentyfirst century. During the 1980s, union power declined, and Idaho's first right-to-work law was enacted. Idahoans voted for Republican Bob Dole over Democrat Bill Clinton by a margin of 18 percent in 1996 and for Republican George W. Bush over Democrat Al Gore by a margin of 39 percent in 2000.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Arrington, Leonard J. History of Idaho. 2 vols. Moscow: University of Idaho Press, 1994.
Ashby, LeRoy. The Spearless Leader: Senator Borah and the Progressive Movement in the 1920s. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1972.
Ewert, Sara E. Dant. "Evolution of an Environmentalist: Senator Frank Church and the Hells Canyon Controversy." Montana: The Magazine of Western History 51, no. 1 (Spring 2001): 36–51.
Fahey, John. The Inland Empire: Unfolding Years, 1879–1929. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1986.
Malone, Michael P. C. Ben Ross and the New Deal in Idaho. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1970.
May, Dean L. Three Frontiers: Family, Land, and Society in the American West, 1850–1900. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
Schwantes, Carlos A. In Mountain Shadows: A History of Idaho. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1991.
Wells, Merle W. Gold Camps and Silver Cities: Nineteenth Century Mining in Central and Southern Idaho. Moscow: Idaho Department of Lands, Bureau of Mines and Geology, 1983.
