An Early Boomtown

Lewiston, Idaho was founded in 1861 during a big mining boom that was taking place in what is now northern Idaho. At the time, this area was part of  Washington, which was a territory at the time. Washington had been split off from Oregon when the latter became a state in 1859.
  Lewiston's founding in 1861 (not sure of the month), makes it the second oldest town in Idaho, but it is the oldest incorporated town in Idaho. The oldest town, Franklin, was platted on August 14, 1860 by Brigham Young. So, Franklin is the only town in Idaho that is older than Lewiston. Franklin is in southeastern Idaho about half a mile north of the Utah border. When Franklin was laid out, the border was poorly defined and it was believed the site was in Utah.
  Lewiston, in its early days, was the shipping and supply center for the gold mines of what is now northern Idaho. Its location at the confluence of the Clearwater and Snake Rivers proved to be ideal. Big steamwheeler ships could access Lewiston via the Columbia and Snake Rivers from the Pacific Ocean. Lewiston is still a seaport today, but now boats have to negotiate locks and canals to manuever around all of the dams that have been built athwart the Snake and Columbia Rivers since then. It is Idaho's only seaport. (I'll bet you didn't know Idaho had a seaport, did you?)
Lewiston's location made it boom  from day one. When Idaho was partitioned off from Washington and became a separate territory in 1863, the booming seaport of Lewiston was chosen as its capital. At the time, Lewiston had about 7,500 people. The boom lasted for about one more year before the town began shrink because the gold mines farther east were playing out, one by one.
  In the first Territorial Legislative session, which began in the winter of 1863, approximately 60% of the members of the legislature were from southern Idaho, where most of the territory's population resided. This was noticed and people began to wonder how long Lewiston would serve as the capital. When the legislative session of 1864 began, Lewiston had already begun to empty out and now about 75% of the legislators were from southern Idaho, but they had to make the long, arduous trek to northern Idaho to serve in the government.
  During the summer of 1864, even before the legislative session began, there was a movement by a fledgling mining town in southwest Idaho called Boise to take the capital away from Lewiston. There was also a movement by the residents of Idaho City, 35 miles northeast of Boise, to become the capital of Idaho. At the time, Idaho City had about 35,000 people and was the biggest city in the Pacific Northwest due to a massive gold rush that took place in the area at the time. Today, it is a town of about 510 people and is a tourist mecca. The population of Idaho City had dropped as low as 91 before its current rebirth. In fact, the massive population influx in the Idaho City area is what led to Idaho's establishment as a separate territory in the first place. It is amazing to me that Idaho City never became the capital of Idaho considering the circumstances of 1860s.
  Boise became the capital of Idaho in 1865 in a very underhanded way. The day that Boise officially became the capital was April 14,1865. However, it received very little publicity at the time because of a more famous event that happened on that same day in Washington, D.C. On the day that Boise became the capital of Idaho, Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth.
  In the next installment of this blog, I will go into more detail about how Boise stole the capital from Lewiston.