Moscow, Idaho

  There is a town in northern Idaho, on the border with Washington, called Moscow. There is no evidence that the town was named after Russia's capital city, or even named by a Russian. There is still debate among historians about the origin of the town's name.
  Moscow has about 24,000 people. It is the home of the University of Idaho, which has about 13,000 students. The territorial legislature established the University of Idaho a few years after the capital moved from Lewiston to Boise. Since northern Idaho is cutoff from southern Idaho by a vast tract of wilderness and extremely rugged landscape, there was a movement on shortly after the capital left Lewiston, for the northern part of Idaho to either re-join Washington or form a separate territory. That is why the University of Idaho was put in such a remote location. It was primarily to appease the secession-bent people in northern Idaho.
  Even though there are only 28 miles that separate the two towns, Moscow is  2,564 feet above sea level while Lewiston is only 738 feet above sea level. But most of that elevation is gained just outside of Lewiston, as I described in the last installment of this blog. Lewiston and Moscow are both located in the Palouse Region, which covers parts of northern Idaho, eastern Washington and a small portion of northeastern Oregon. It is a lush grassland that is emphatically hilly. The Palouse region is also a lush farming and ranching area.
  Even though Moscow was not named after the city in Russia, its high school sports teams are called the Bears, which is an homage to Russia.  The bear is the national symbol of Russia just like the eagle is the symbol of the United States.
  Moscow is typical of many university towns in the fact that it has a lively nightlife and is also a very educated town. These two things are enhanced by the fact that there is another university town only 8 miles away. That is Pullman, Washington, which is the home of Washington State University.
 There is a very attractive downtown area in Moscow and the heart of it, Main Street, was narrowed in recent years to make the area more pedestrian friendly. The street was narrowed by making the sidewalks wider and by allowing angled parking on one side with parallel parking on the other side . The street is now one lane of traffic each direction. To accommodate any would be traffic problems caused by the narrowing of Main Street, the next street in each direction, Washington Street to the east and Jackson Street  to the west, were transformed in to one-way streets. They are both 3 lanes of one-way traffic with parallel parking on each side. In addition, half a block of Fourth Street, on each side of Main, has been closed off and turned into a pedestrian area basically to allow pedestrians along Main Street unimpeded access without having to worry about cross traffic. Main Street is lined with coffee shops. specialty shops, bistros, nightclubs and bars and is a lively place, both day and night.