Idaho State History - Idaho, state in the western United States, forming the eastern section of the Pacific Northwest. Idaho is an area of striking physical diversity and natural beauty. The state’s many natural resources have long been the basis of its economic output and development, and they remain a key to its future progress.
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.
Economic development has proceeded at a rapid pace in Idaho since the 1940s. Agriculture, along with other primary activities, continues to be the basis of the economy, but gains have been made in manufacturing, particularly in food processing, the manufacture of wood products, and high-technology industries. Tourism and recreation are also important sources of income. Boise is Idaho’s capital and largest city. The Official Government website is http://www.idaho.gov/
The first permanent settlement of whites in Idaho country was the settlement of the Mormon colony at Franklin in Cache Valley, but it was the lure of gold that brought the first major wave of settlers. Just three years after gold was discovered, the territory of Idaho was created, in 1863, consisting of ten counties. The new territory included what is now all of Montana and most of present-day Wyoming. At the peak of the mining boom as many as 70,000 whites may have been in Idaho Territory. By 1870, however, this number had dwindled to 15,000. Mining was Idaho's chief producer of wealth until the beginning of the twentieth century when agriculture became the number one industry.
In 1866 the first district land office in Idaho opened in Boise. Other district offices included Lewiston in 1866, Oxford in 1879, Hailey in 1883, Coeur d'Alene in 1884, and Blackfoot in 1886. After the Civil War, Confederate refugees settled in Idaho. Others came to Idaho during a renewed mining boom during the 1880s and 1890s and with the coming of the railroads to the farm land of southern Idaho.
Idaho's transition from a territory to statehood was long and difficult. When the new Idaho Constitution was drafted in 1889, territory officials sought to redress sectional antagonisms. The only exception was that a section in the constitution was written denying Mormons the right to vote and to hold public office. Many compromises had to be reached in order to set the boundaries of the new state. Idaho became a state on 3 July 1890.
Idaho was never a “melting pot,” but did have its share of ethnic groups such as Scandinavian converts to the Mormon faith who colonized in eastern Idaho. Coeur d'Alene mines attracted miners from Wales and immigrants from the Balkans, and the Finns settled in the high mountain valleys near Payette Lakes. Hundreds of Chinese came to Idaho in the 1860s and 1870s to work in the mines. The Basque migration from the Spanish Pyrenees came primarily to Idaho, northern Nevada, western Oregon, and California as sheepherders. Japanese immigrants began settling in southwestern Idaho prior to World War II. Other Japanese settled near Idaho Falls and Pocatello. Between 1900 and 1910, reclamation projects opened desert lands for farming. This brought a new wave of settlement from nearby states, especially Utah.
Idaho's Native American population lives on four reservations: Nez Perce Reservation, Coeur d'Alene Reservation in northern Idaho, Fort Hall Reservation south of Pocatello, and Duck Valley Reservation in Owyhee County. Many Kootenai Native Americans reside in an enclave near Bonners Ferry, and some Kalispell Native Americans live in an enclave at Cusick on the Idaho-Montana border.
Idaho's development was often turbulent and yet tolerant and just at times. The Mormon east, non-Mormon west, and the northern mining part of the state developed three distinct cultures that eventually grew and bonded into the state of Idaho.
Native American - According to the 1900 U.S. census, the following tribal members were residing in Idaho: Bannocks, Cayuse, Coeur d'Alene, Colville, Cree, Crow, Flathead, Kalispell, Kootenai, Omaha, Seletze, Sheepeater, Snake, Spokane, and Umatilla.
Several agencies were set up by the federal government to administer to the affairs of Idaho's Native American population. These records are available at the National Archives/Pacific Northwest Region and the Idaho State Historical Society. Northern Idaho Agency records are also available at the FHL.
Fort Hall Agency, Fort Hall, Idaho (1889-1952), records include: school surveys and censuses, mining permits, grazing leases, ledgers and cards for accounts of individual Indians, records concerning owners of ceded land, irrigation, forestry, loans, and law suits. The Fort Hall Agency administered to the affairs of the Boise and Bruneau band of the Shoshone and Bannock tribes. Bannock tribal members from Wyoming came under the jurisdiction of the Fort Hall Agency in 1872.
Northern Idaho Agency, Lapai, Idaho (1875-1964), records include: general correspondence and a decimal file, historical files, correspondence concerning Kutenai educational contracts, grazing and timber leases, ledgers for accounts of individual Indians, annuity payrolls, vital statistics, census records, Nez Perce tribal minutes, records concerning forestry, roads, and economic and social surveys. This agency administered to the affairs of the Coeur d'Alene, Kootenai, and Nez Perce Reservations.
In researching tribal records in Idaho, two school records and one other major collection should not be overlooked. The Chemawa Indian School in Chemawa, Oregon, and the Fort Shaw School in Cascade County, Montana, enrolled students from the whole of the northwestern United States. For more details, see the Native American Records sections for Montana and Oregon.
Two major Native American collections are the Major James McLaughlin Papers and the Pacific Northwest Tribes Missions Collection of the Oregon Province Archives of the Society of Jesus, 1853-1960. For more details on these collections, see Montana—Native American section. For further explanation of Native American land ownership, see Oregon—Native American section.
Other Ethnic Groups - Idaho had its share of ethnic minorities. Because Idaho was a frontier society, many ethnic groups did not readily blend into the society at large. Eastern Idaho was overwhelmingly part of the Mormon intermountain empire, made up mostly of Mormon converts from England and Scandinavia. The fact that the Mormons were distinctive in their religion and culture separated them from the mainstream frontier society. Their court system was administered by the Mormon theocracy, and therefore their dependence on Idaho territorial law was minimal.
The first Chinese came to Idaho in 1864 to mine the Oro Fino gold fields. They were brought from California to alleviate a shortage of labor, and soon every mining town in the territory had an ethnic Chinese community. By 1870 there were 4,274 Chinese in Idaho, which constituted 28.5 percent of Idaho's entire population. At one time, Boise had the largest Chinatown outside of San Francisco.
The Chinese came by steamers from San Francisco to Portland or Umatilla, and on to the Idaho placer mines by way of the Blue Mountains. Others came from Utah after the completion of the railroad, and a substantial number migrated from the Comstock Lode country of Nevada. An estimated 20 percent of the total number of Chinese came from British Columbia. Idaho's ethnic Chinese originally came from the city of Canton and province of Kuang-Tuang, which at the time was experiencing a great deal of political unrest, as well as severe weather conditions which affected the economy and made migration to America attractive.
The Chinese paid their share of taxes in Idaho, including miners' tax, property tax, poll tax, and hospital tax. The Masonic lodge was very popular among the Chinese as both a social and a fraternal organization. Very few Chinese became Christians.
No regionally organized anti-Chinese groups emerged in Idaho, unlike neighboring states. Some rural violence did occur during the wave of anti-Chinese sentiments during 1885 and 1886. Eventually legal matters concerning the Chinese were brought before the Idaho Supreme Court, which refused to imitate the hysteria that had swept Montana, Oregon, and Washington. Instead it sought to balance judiciously the interest of Idaho's Chinese and non-Chinese populations.
In 1880 there were 3,379 Chinese in Idaho. By 1890 the number had declined to 2,007, and in 1900, 1,467. The bulk of the Chinese population in the latter part of the nineteenth century was in Boise County.
In the early 1970s the building belonging to the Hip Sing Association, a Chinese fraternity, was torn down in Boise, and a large collection of materials from the building were donated to the Idaho State Historical Society. The collection included both items and papers, and these papers, written in Chinese, are currently being inventoried. This is the only Chinese collection on file at the Idaho State Historical Society, and it will be available to the public at a future time.
The Japanese first came to Idaho in the decade following statehood in 1890, from which time they have constituted the state's largest ethnic group. By the end of the 1890s, Japanese settlements were common features along the length of the Oregon Short Line Railroad, especially in Nampa and Pocatello. By 1920 the number of Japanese in Idaho had reached 1,569.
World War II put the Japanese-American community's loyalty in question in the minds of many Americans. With the relocation of Japanese-Americans to camps set up by the U.S. government, the history of this ethnic group entered a new period. One of the ten camps was in Idaho. This camp, located in Hunt, Idaho, opened in August 1942 and became known as Camp Minidoka. Most of the residents in the camp were from Portland and Seattle. The effect of relocation on Idaho continued to be felt after the war as many Japanese-Americans chose to remain in Idaho rather than return to their former homes.
The Basque in Idaho came from the Spanish provinces of Guipuzcoa, Viscaya, Alava, and Navarre in the Pyrenees Mountains. Boise was the center of Basque immigration and probably has the largest Basque-American community in the American West. Young Basque left their homelands for California in 1876 because of Spanish suppression.
As the Basque people moved into southern Idaho, they sent word back to their homeland that jobs were available in the area. Basque came to the Boise Valley in their greatest numbers between 1900 and 1920. As their population grew, a serious religious problem surfaced. The Basque were Catholics who had found their homes in a predominantly Protestant society. The Catholic parishes in the Boise Valley were unable to minister to the immigrants as the Basque spoke very little, if any, English. In 1911, the Bishop of the Boise diocese arranged for a Basque speaking priest to be sent to Idaho. This was the beginning of a viable Basque community in Boise, which centered around a few boarding houses in the southeastern portion of the city. For a listing of Basque collections and sources, see Oregon—Other Ethnic Groups section.
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