Though all Western states endured long disputes regarding their boundaries before being admitted to the Union, Idaho suffered the most intense political battles over its borders. For nearly thirty years political interests shifted the territorial and state lines before settling on the cobbled-together version known today.
Pre-1860 gold discoveries resulted in fthe first forced territorial changes in the west, requiring adjustments in the Oregon Territory to fit migration patterns. The Washington Territory was created in 1853 to appease clamoring settlers north of the Columbia River. Oregon's 1859 statehood admittance necessitated a size that included the vast uninhabited eastern tract that now abuts Idaho.
map courtesy of Wikipedia
That "necessary mistake" reared its head in the last election when Right wing eastern Oregon sought to secede from its Liberal Western counterpart.
In 1862, responding to gold rushes on the Clearwater, Salmon, and Upper Missouri, Congress created the Idaho Territory, an area that included all of what would become Montana and most of an eventual Wyoming.
Map courtesy of Wikipedia
In 1863, during a busy Congressional session that was more concerned with the failing efforts in the Civil War, a bill was introduced to create the Montana Territory (see map below):
One senator moved to change the name from Montana to Idaho but was rebuffed, and then "Subterranean Ben" Harding of Oregon proposed an Idaho Territory that changed the boundaries of the original bill to those in the map below--a much larger area:
Only three of seven committee members favored Harding's bill, but it was too late to change it--given the late date in a Congress busy with a more pressing agenda (the next day was scheduled as the last of the session), it was either pass Harding's proposal or kill the bill. Hence, the Idaho Territory was born.
Further changes were in store. Bannack and Virginia City (in what we now know as Montana) representatives lobbied for yet another area to be labeled Montana with the Bitterroots separating it from Idaho--removing Missoula from the Idaho Territory. Idaho's legislature tried, in 1866, to combine Western Montana, Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho into a territory called Columbia but Montana balked.
When Leesburg, northwest of Salmon, had a gold strike there was talk about taking Montana's line southward to incorporate it. No road, save a trail that could be traversed in summer, connected North and South Idaho until 1890, when Idaho gained statehood, and the roundtrip route from Leesburg and Salmon through Virginia City and Salt Lake to the capital was 1600 miles as opposed to 600 through Idaho City. This created difficulties for legislative participation. One Leesburg delegate took up snowshoes for the two hundred mile trek home. The effort to move the Salmon area into Montana failed, however.
The western border of the forty-mile wide Idaho Panhandle, which was (and is) considered an abomination by some because of its ill-fitting nature with the remainder of the state, was created in 1863 by Congress. The Oregon Territory had been cut up ten years earlier to make Washington Territory (Idaho, Washington, Montana and parts of present-day Wyoming), but Congress, along with President Lincoln's approval, split it again. And though ample natural boundaries existed, including the Bitterroots, the Cascades, or the Columbia River, a line was drawn instead---what political geographer Norman Pounds would have considered a "total lack of concern for such people as may live in the area to be divided". Congress chose to run the line up from Oregon's border to Canada at the 117th meridian. A year later, Montana Territory arose with the present day eastern border of Idaho's panhandle created then. Southern Idaho's boundary was also permanently fixed in 1868.
Map courtesy of Wikipedia
Idaho's present day boundary to its southeast section, however, wasn't complete until later in 1868 when the Wyoming Territory was created by almost halving the Dakota Territory.
Eastern Washington's population at the time, located mostly near Walla Walla, numbered only 2000, Idaho's entire populace reaching 20,000 only during high seasonal times. Despite the small numbers, different factions still wanted the Territory broken up--including farming and mining interests in Walla Walla, Portland shippers and Lewiston miners--each group with its own agenda. Puget Sound interests wanted the bordeerline drawn at the Cascades, as did those from Walla Walla. Such a border, however, was feared to make a territory too small to be allowed eventual statehood.
Why was statehood so important? Territorial rule amounted to a "colonial system under foreign rule" in which the people had no vote, no say in the matter of passing legislation, and no power to appoint officials. Though some felt statehood would increase taxes, most of current administrative costs were already being provided by the taxpayers, while entering the Union meant the gift (and consequent burden) of three and a half million of acres of land.
Since North Idaho shared more in common with Eastern Washington, the two aspired to become a single commonwealth. But doing so would delay statehood for Southern Idaho and Western Washington, each considered too small an entity to join the Union if broken up, so they attempted instead to form a state with Western Washington, leaving Idaho without the possibility of statehood. The Idaho Territory would later agree in 1884 to donate northern counties to Washington, but the resulting boundary discussions held back admission to the Union. Infighting between Congressional Houses of opposing parties, each of which supported separate statehood proposals, prevented the formation of either Idaho or a Washington that included the northern counties.
1868's formation of the Wyoming Territory had created an administrative problem that persists today, in that the natural boundaries of the Snake River basin were broken by a geometrical border, with Wyoming controlling the upper watershed and Idaho the lower. The Utah border presented a different problem, the national distaste for Mormonism creating cries to expand Idaho's border to envelop portions of Utah to dilute Mormon power--cries which failed. Nevada, however, successfully annexed a large strip of Utah in 1866 and attempted to expand into Idaho, as well, three years later. Nevada Senator William Stewart suggested Northern Idaho join with Washington and southern Idaho with Nevada so that both areas could achieve statehood. The map below shows his proposal:
Map courtesy Merle Wells
There were other proposals that went by the wayside. California Senator George Hearst developed a plan to combine the rich mining districts of Idaho and Montana into a single state. He met with Fred Dubois and Idaho Governor Stevenson and they suggested Montana relinquish Beaverhead and Missoula counties to Idaho to create a state based on ming, bu to no avail.
Map courtesy of Merle Wells
Congress' admission of Republican state Colorado in 1876 swayed the subsequent election, so in following years neither party was eager to alter the status quo by granting statehood to Idaho or other territories. Senator Dubois got to work, though, persuading communities to go on record against Nevada's continued bid to incorporate Southern Idaho, then introducing a bill to reject the Northern Idaho split to Washington.
Not long after southern Idahoans rejected joining Nevada as a state, a Republican President and Congress sought to quickly make five territories into six Republican states to add to their power. New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah also aspired to statehood but being Democrat weren't included on that 1889 wish list. North Dakota, South Dakota, Washington, Montana, Idaho and Wyoming quickly put together Constitutional Conventions.
It required some political maneuvering. The mining areas of Northern Idaho showed preference to be associated with Montana while the farming communities supported a Washington alliance. Idaho took advantage of the split by offering up the State University to Moscow to gain support for an Idaho inclusion. It worked--Idaho as we know it, panhandle and all, was unified in its aim for statehood.
U.S. Congressional Democrats objected to Idaho's statehood, however, on two grounds: 1) nearly 15,000 Mormons couldn't vote because of laws on Idaho's books preventing them, as believers in "celestial marriage", from voting, holding office or serving on a jury. Many deemed the law unconstitutional; 2) Idaho had not gone through the typical legislative process of creating a Constitution, instead had used a collection of "volunteers" assigned by the Governor's proclamation (Wyoming would also adopt this quick-fix format).
Those objections failed and Idaho became a state in 1890, creating a connecting area between West and East coasts for the Union for the first time.
This blog borrows heavily from the following scholarly articles:
Wells, Merle. “Idaho’s Season of Political Distress: An Unusual Path to Statehood.” Montana: The Magazine of Western History, vol. 37, no. 4, 1987, pp. 58–67. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/4519093. Accessed 29 Jan. 2024.
Wunder, John R. “Tampering with the Northwest Frontier: The Accidental Design of the Washington/Idaho Boundary.” The Pacific Northwest Quarterly, vol. 68, no. 1, 1977, pp. 1–12. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40489519. Accessed 30 Jan. 2024.
Comentários