Well, my posts keep bringing me back to Idaho. Idaho is a state that I have not visited very often, but I absolutely loved it when I did! Idaho, Arizona and New Mexico are my three favorite states. What is amazing about Idaho is how much of it is still untouched wilderness. There are huge chunks of the state that are still roadless to this day. This is especially true in the central part of the state and also in Owyhee County, which occupies the southwest corner of Idaho. But it holds true for the vast majority of the state.
I have not personally visited Idaho since 2008 and I am having "withdrawals." I now live farther away from Idaho than I did in the past, so getting there would be a little more difficult.
Idaho seems to have somewhat of an identity crisis. I don't mean that as a put down at all, but, in the past, whenever I would say "Idaho," people usually thought I was talking about Iowa or Ohio. Also, when people think of Idaho, they usually think of whitewater streams, dark, dense forests and mountain men. Well, that is true, but there is a lot more than that. The majority of southern Idaho is desert and a good sized chunk of northern Idaho is a lush grassland that is part of the Palouse Region. The Palouse Region lies mostly in Washington and also occupies the northeast corner of Oregon, but it extends into Idaho as well. There is also a lush grassland in southern Idaho, near the Utah border. In fact, this area is part of
Curlew National Grassland, a system of protected grasslands that were established after the horrendous Dust Bowl days of the 1930s. Most national grasslands are in the Midwest, in the Plains states, but there is one in Idaho and one in Oregon. These are the farthest west of the national grasslands. National Grasslands are administered by the U.S. Forest Service, under the direction of the Department of Agriculture.
In addition to Idaho's apparent identity crisis, it has recently been determined that the state's name is fictitious. It was believed that "Idaho" was a derivative of "eda how," which was supposedly a Shoshone Indian word that meant "sun shining on the mountains."
This has recently been determined to be false. Yet this claim appeared in text books until very recently. George Willing, an eccentric lobbyist in the 1860s, suggested the name "Idaho" when Congress was considering creating a new territory in this area. This name was initially rejected, but would not go away. The Colorado town of Idaho Springs took this name and later a steamship took the name "Idaho." Eventually a county was created called Idaho County. This name later was applied to the new territory. The county named Idaho got its name before the territory/state did. George Willing even admitted later that he made the name up, because he liked the sound of it, but this evidently escaped the notice of historians until very recently. And yet, there is a Comanche Indian word "idaahe" that means "enemy." Hmmmm could there be a connection there? People don't seem to think so, but there might be. Maybe George Willing just made up a word without realizing the similarity it had to a Comanche word?
Anyway, I am planning to write about Idaho for awhile.
