Happy Birthday, Idaho!
A Legacy We’ll Always Prize
by Senator Brent Hill
The year was 1890. The day was not particularly hot considering it was early July, but the air inside the Territorial Capitol Building in Boise was stifling. It had been a year since the sixty-eight members of Idaho’s constitutional convention began their 28-day debate to create and adopt the state’s constitution. Then, on November 5, 1889, the citizens of Idaho Territory ratified the constitution by a vote of 12,398 to 1,773.
Now, waiting for word that President Benjamin Harrison would sign the law admitting Idaho to the Union, one could not help but reflect on the difficult road that had lead to Idaho’s statehood. More than once during the seventeen years since Abraham Lincoln had signed the act organizing Idaho as a territory in 1863, the territory had come perilously close to being divided up and split among its neighbors.
Lewiston had been chosen as the Territorial Capital, but it hadn’t taken long for southern Idaho legislators to garnish the votes to move the capital to Boise. Offended by the action, north Idahoans wanted out. Most people living in Lewiston and northern parts favored union with Washington or Montana Territory, or creating a new territory out of parts of each. At the same time, southern Idaho was being recruited by Nevada Republican Senator William M. Stewart.
By the 1880’s, more people lived in southern Idaho Territory than in the State of Nevada. Plans for joining southern Idaho with Nevada included holding alternative legislative sessions in Carson City, Nevada and Boise, Idaho. A bill for this purpose cleared Congress in March 1887, but as a favor to Idaho’s Democratic Territorial Governor Edward A. Stevenson, President Grover Cleveland (also a Democrat) never signed it into law. Legislative efforts to split the state passed the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives in February of 1888, but died in the Republican-controlled Senate. Idaho remained intact, but not without a compromise to satisfy the citizens of northern Idaho. The legislature had previously voted to locate the University of Idaho at Eagle Rock (Idaho Falls). By moving the site of the university to Moscow in 1889, north Idaho’s demands for secession were pacified and most northerners resigned themselves to their inclusion in the new state of Idaho.
Idaho was born out of the determination of citizens more committed to public unity than to political diversity; more dedicated to high ideals than to geographical rivalries. I believe these same principles continue to make Idaho great. This week we celebrate not only the birth of our nation, but the birth of our state. On July 3, 1890, Idaho became the forty-third state of the Union.
There’s truly one state in this great land of ours,
Where ideals can be realized.
The pioneers made it so for you and me,
A legacy we’ll always prize.
(Idaho State Song)