The History of Idaho

Idaho is primarily a mountainous state, much of it is covered by the Rocky Mountains. High, often snowcapped peaks, broad expanses of plateaus and upland slopes, and some of the finest forestlands in the United States occupy central and northern Idaho.

The mountains of the central portion of the state have long formed a barrier to communication between north and south and between east and west. North of these mountains lies a narrow section known as the Panhandle, noted for its numerous lakes and forests and abundant mineral resources. South of the central mountains and in contrast with the rest of the state is the Snake River Plain. The plain, which is the dominant feature of southern Idaho, curves across the width of the state as a broad treeless expanse of land. It includes the most densely and most sparsely settled sections of the state. The plain includes most of the state's principal cities and accounts for much of Idaho's farm output, but it also includes some of the most desolate areas in the Pacific Northwest. Sheets of hardened lava, volcanic craters and cinder cones, and desolate crags and pinnacles form an almost totally barren landscape. Nevertheless, even these desolate areas are not without economic value, for they attract numerous tourists and contain some mineral wealth.

Innumerable volcanoes spewed up their roaring flaming contents seeking in vain to relieve the earth's interior of its stupendous pressures. With enormous deliberation great bodies of rock began to protrude. Central Idaho was part of one of these early masses.

Shoshone Island Professor Thomas Condon of the University of Oregon originally held that northern Idaho was once part of an island in the Pacific Ocean; he called it "Shoshone Island".

The Granite Uplift In the Secondary epoch of the earth's career, great quantities of liquid granite were forced up under, sometimes through, the strata of sediment, baking the latter into quartzites, slates and marbles. The intrusion of moten granite raised the sediments far higher than our present mountain tops. In this precess the sedimentary strata were broken, bent and sometimes partially melted, distorted into convoluted forms, sometimes even turned completely upside-down. As the granite cooled and contracted, fissures formed, into which solutions of silica flowed, carrying the precious metals and thus making pockets and veins of ore.

The Miocene Age The sedimentary strata, lying as they did on top of the intruding granite, became a land of lakes and wooded mountains. The climate, which until that time had been sub-tropical, began to approach that of the present temperate zones.

The Pliocene Age differed from its preceding age in having a slightly lower temperature, reaching in Idaho a climate similar to the present one.

The Idaho Glaciers the lengthening of the mountain line, which separated us from the western coast, the diversion of the Japan Current from our borders, together with a constant increase in the elevation of our mountain ranges helped, if indeed they did not cause the long periods of excessive cold.

The Age of Fire The Idaho historian John E. Rees records that the old crater of Buffalo Hump was in a state of eruption as late as 1866.

Works of Erosion In most cases the activities of fire and ice left our surfaces broken, jagged, rough.

Everlasting Hills The general surface of Idaho is extremely mountainous and broken.

8,000 to 14,000 years ago: Paleo-Indian big game-hunters, with Clovis (11,500 to 12,500 B.P), Folsom (10,500 to 11,000 B.P), and Plano (8,000 to 10,500 B.P) cultures, live in what is now Idaho.

In January 1989 at a gravel quarry near Buhl, Idaho - "Buhl Woman". Bone samples taken form the burial produced a radiocarbon date of 10,675 + or - 95 years before present. Study of the teeth and bones suggest that the "Buhl Woman" was between 17 and 21 years old when she died. No genetic testing has been done, and there is disagreement concerning the morphology of the skull. Todd Fenton of Michigan State University has indicated that the skull's morphology is similar to that of American Indian and East Asian populations, while according to anthropologist Richard Jantz of the University of Tennessee, "She doesn't fit into any modern group but is most similar to today's Polynesians." Another source states "Buhl Woman of Idaho, 8750 B.C., clearly resembles modern Indians-round head, wide face."

The oldest skull in the Americas up to now, believed to be that of "Buhl Woman,"

In life, Buhl Woman ate abundant bison and elk, as well as salmon heading upriver to spawn. Sloping surfaces and heavily worn enamel on her teeth, unusual for someone so young, indicate that her diet included frequent doses of sand or grit, as if her meat had been pounded or stone-ground into a jerky.

Lines of interrupted growth on her thighbone tell of stress from illness or malnutrition during childhood, but she grew to a height of 5'2" and otherwise enjoyed good health. What caused her death remains unknown.

There were four artifacts and one badger baculum bone found with the Buhl skeleton. A Windust point, a bone needle, the other two bone pieces have been described as fragments belonging to possibly a single awl or pin. Buhl woman's right cheek lay atop a pressure-flaked, pointed obsidian tool. Since this tool shows no sign of wear, and since the positioning of this tool seems deliberate, it has been theorized that it was made as a grave offering. In addition, like the obsidian tool, the eye of the bone needle showed no signs of wear. For photos of these tools, click here.

All the Buhl site human remains, the artifacts and the badger bone were handed over to the Shoshone-Bannock Tribe, who claimed them, in December of 1992 for reburial. Tribal elders commented, "Recent deaths on the reservation were caused by the stirring of the Buhl woman's spirit."

For more information on Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act(NAGPRA)
Click Here

Information sources
http://lithiccastinglab.com/cast-page/2003augustwindustpointbuhl.htm
http://www.cabrillo.edu/~crsmith/buhl.html
http://users.wfu.edu/cyclone/THE%20SOLUTREAN%20CONNECTION%20QUESTION.htm
http://www.jerspage.com/old.skull.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buhl_woman
http://www.abotech.com/Articles/firstamericans.htm
http://www.desertusa.com/ind1/ind_new/ind20.html
http://www.csasi.org/2000_july_journal/earliest%20americans.htm
http://www.archaeology.org/9811/newsbriefs/buhl.html
http://www.hcn.org/servlets/hcn.Article?article_id=2100

May 11, 1792 Captain Robert Gray in the American ship Columbia sailed up a great river, which he named after his ship. On August 12, 1805, Captain Meriwether Lewis raised the Stars and Stripes on the continental divide at Lemhi Pass, then the extreme western point of the United States. On these incidents the United States claimed the land lying west of the Mississippi by the right of discovery.

On September 15, 1811, Wilson Price Hunt entered the land that would become Idaho at the Teton Pass and followed the Snake River from that point across Idaho and to the mouth of the stream where it enters the Columbia. Here he found the British flag flying. Hunt took the flag down on the grounds of the prior discovery by Lewis and Clark. He proceeded on to Astoria where he found that his partners had established an American settlement. Based on this act, the western coast from the 42nd parallel to the north was claimed by the United States by the right of settlement.

There was a struggle between the United States and Great Britain over the Oregon Country. In 1846 a treaty was entered into, by which the northern line of the United States was fixed on the 46th parallel of latitude where it still remains.

The first step in the organization of this no man's land was the creation of the Oregon Territory in 1846. In 1853 the Washington Territory was organized out of the Oregon Territory, it included what would become Northern Idaho, north of the parallel 46, practically north of the Salmon River. What would become southern Idaho remained part of the Oregon Territory.

1859 Oregon was made a state with its present boundaries, while the Washington Territory was extended to include all of Idaho with parts of Montana and Wyoming.

On March 3, 1863, by proclamation of President Abraham Lincoln, the Idaho Territory was organized out of parts of Washington, Nebraska, and Dakota Territories. The Idaho Territory was divided into four counties; Shoshone, Nez Perce, Idaho and Boise, their county seats respectively were Pierce City, Lewiston, Florence, and Bannack (later changed to Idaho City).

Sources:
"Idaho: The Place and Its People" by Bryon Defenbach
"History of Idaho" by James H. Hawley

The highlights of the great inland empire in which became Idaho are its discovery in 1805, its exploration in the immediately succeeding years and the discovery of placer gold in the 1860s. Its chief avenue of early travel was the great highway begun in 1830, continued in 1843, and firmly established in the next fourteen years.

The Oregon Trail was the most important and longest western road. Two thousand miles in length extending form Independence, Missouri to the Willamette, crossing three mountain ranges and traversing the territory of ten Indian tribes. Over one-fifth of its entire length lay in Idaho. The blood of the emigrants consecrated the 415 miles. At Massacre Rocks, Salmon Falls, Caldwell and scores of other places painted Indians almost annihilated trains already levied by privation, hardship, and epidemic diseases.

October 1811, the first white man dies in what would become Idaho. He drown at Milner on the Snake, while his comrade watched, the make up of the group was a Scotchmen, French-Canadians, a squaw, and a couple of children. A month later on November 11, 1811 a detachment of the same company, freezing, thirsty and starving seen for the first time by white men the river of whirlpools, the Wihinast, Reed's River, now known as the Boise. It was the first white men to set foot on the ground that would be come the Capital of Idaho, Boise. Almost on the very same spot a year or two later, one of these same men would be scalped and mangled, becoming the first white victim in Idaho of the Indians. These people were part of the Lewis and Clark expedition.

In 1863 most of the population in the new territory of Idaho, estimated at 2,000, was in and around the ten principal towns which were really mining camps. This population estimate did not include settlements in and around Franklin, at the time, and for some years after, it was thought that Franklin was included within the Territory of Utah.

Sources:
"Idaho: The Place and Its People" by Bryon Defenbach
"History of Idaho" by James H. Hawley

Highest Elevation: 12,662 ft. (Mt. Borah) Idaho has more than 50 peaks higher than 10,000 feet.

Lowest Elevation: 738 ft. (Lewiston)

Area: 83,557 square miles

Water Mass: 823 square miles

River Miles: 3,100 - (more than any other state)

Temperature Extremes: Highest, 118 degrees at Orofino July 28, 1934; Lowest, -60 degrees at Island Park Dam, January 18, 1943.

Idaho's Salmon River, known as the "River of No Return" because of its difficult passage, is the nation's longest free-flowing river that heads and flows within a single state.

Did you know that Idaho has a seaport? The Port of Lewiston allows the exportation of millions of bushels of grain down the Snake and Columbia Rivers for overseas shipment.

The Statehouse in Boise and dozens of other buildings in the city use geothermal heat from underground hot springs. In fact, Idaho is well sprinkled with public and private hot springs.

In 1953, the engineering prototype of the first nuclear submarine, the Nautilus, was built and tested in the Idaho desert on the Snake River Plain near Arco.

The deepest river gorge in the North American Continent is Idaho's Hells Canyon - 7,900 feet deep. Yes, it's deeper than the Grand Canyon.

63% of Idaho is public land managed by the federal government.

The Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness is the largest wilderness area in the 48 contiguous states - 2.3 million acres of rugged, unspoiled back country.

Idaho is number one in the nation in the production of:
o Potatoes
o Trout
o Austrian Winter Peas

Admission to Statehood: July 3, 1890
State Motto: "Esto Perpetua" (Let it be perpetual)

State Song: Here We Have Idaho
click here for Lyrics

Fire Rainbow

photographed in Couer D'Alene Idaho, June 3, 2006, by Gavin Anderson.

This is not technically a rainbow, but a circumhorizon arc, as it is known. It occurs when sunlight passes through ice crystals in high cirrus clouds. It is one of 15 types of ice halos formed only when the most specific of factors dovetail precisely together.