19 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About Idaho
1. Idaho has more whitewater than any other state in the Lower 48.
Photo: Shutterstock/Benny Marty
Idaho is the
2. There’s serious Basque culture here.
Ever since the influx of Basque immigrants in the 19th century, Idaho has served as an unlikely epicenter of the diaspora outside of Europe. Today, the descendants of those early silver miners and shepherds celebrate their heritage every half decade with one hell of a party, called
3. It hosts one of the country’s hottest new music festivals.
Every year since its inauguration in March 2012, local music legend Built to Spill has graced the
Last year’s festival featured over 430 acts — from indie and folk to hip hop — spread across 25 stages at downtown Boise’s most intimate venues, bars, even a church. Inspired by festivals like SXSW, the fest also hosts indie flicks, TED-style talks, theater, yoga, a skateboard competition, and a whole set of events for kids, including a ukulele jam session and a costume parade.
4. It has the only State Seal designed by a woman.
Shortly after Idaho gained statehood in 1890, its governor decided it was time for a new state seal. The First Legislature for the State of Idaho held a national competition with a $100 prize that would be awarded to the best design. Artists from all over the country entered, but it was Emma Edwards, a recent Boise transplant and art teacher, whose painting of a male miner and a female goddess, signifying freedom and suffrage, won the competition to become the official State Seal in 1891.
5. There are more soakable hot springs here than anywhere in the US.
Photo: Idaho Tourism
Idaho has a whopping 340 geothermal hot springs, and 130 of them are the perfect temperature for skinnydipping. Dotted across the state, some of the best, like
6. …and you can mountain bike to them.
In 2014, the Adventure Cycling Association created a new mountain bike trail map called the
7. Twin Falls is the location of Evel Knievel’s failed canyon jump.
On September 8, 1974, daredevil Evel Knievel rolled into Twin Falls wearing his famous star-spangled suit. On the edge of Idaho’s 500ft-tall Snake River Canyon, he mounted a rocket-powered motorcycle and was launched high in the sky in an attempt to cross the quarter-mile-wide gorge. The media went wild, broadcasting his stunt to TVs everywhere.
Unfortunately, Knievel’s safety chute deployed prematurely, spiraling him and his rocket craft out of control, and plummeting him to what should have been a watery grave. Instead, he landed on the edge of the river, unscathed except for a broken nose. Two miles west of the jump site, his legacy lives on at a gravestone-like monument where Evel’s fans still come to pay homage.
8. You can sandboard down the country’s tallest sand dune.
Just outside the city of Mountain Home is
9. The world’s first chairlift was built in Idaho.
Photo:
In 1936, a Swiss engineer brought the world’s first aerial chairlift to Sun Valley, Idaho, at the same time that a four-story ski lodge was built. And thus, the country’s first destination ski resort was born. While the original chairlift is no longer in operation, Sun Valley is still one of America’s premier ski mountains and a homebase for dozens of Olympic skiers and snowboarders. And, true to its name, it gets 250 days of sun per year.
10. Idahoans celebrate New Years with a potato.
Who needs the ball drop in Times Square when you have a giant potato falling from the sky in downtown Boise? The Idaho Potato Drop attracted nearly 80,000 people in 2014 with a bustling block party featuring local musicians, a beer garden, food trucks, and, well…a 17ft potato for the countdown.
11. Boise has a booming microbrew movement.
With 15+ microbreweries in city limits, the craft beer scene has grown so popular there’s now a legit
12. Idaho also has several distilleries.
In 2000, downtown Boise’s
13. …and 52 wineries.
Probably didn’t think of Idaho as being wine country, right? Grape growers know best, and Idaho’s rich, volcanic soil and long daylight hours have been attracting winemakers for over a century. Leading varietals include chardonnay, riesling, and cab.
14. It has the continent’s largest concentration of birds of prey.
The 485,000-acre
Idaho is also leading the charge in recovering endangered birds at the nonprofit
15. Hemingway lived here.
First coming to Sun Valley on a fishing trip in 1939, Ernest Hemingway quickly fell in love with the Wood River Valley. The next fall he came again, setting up shop in Room 206 of the Sun Valley Lodge, where he edited his Pulitzer-nominated For Whom the Bell Tolls. He spent the next two decades fishing and hunting in what he described as “the loveliest mountains that I know.” In 1959, he bought a house and moved to Ketchum, and Hemingway and his wife Mary are both buried at the Ketchum Cemetery; a memorial has been dedicated to him along nearby Trail Creek.
16. Weiser is the “Fiddling Capital of the World.”
Photo: Nancy Grindstaff for
Every year since 1953, competitive fiddlers from across the nation have traveled to the Idaho town of Weiser for the National Oldtime Fiddlers’ Contest. Held every June, the week-long hoedown sees about 350 fiddlers competing, with tunes judged on “danceability, old-time style, rhythm, and tone.” And over at the Fiddletown campground, where contestants and their families shack up, the jamming and dance party continues late into the night.
17. Idaho is home to the two deepest canyons in the country.
Most people think the Grand Canyon is the deepest canyon in the US. Wrong. Northern Idaho’s
18. Boise is the City of Trees.
As the story goes, Boise got its name when French-Canadian fur trappers arrived in the 1800s and stumbled on the Boise River Valley, thickly lined with cottonwoods. They were so relieved to find shade and water after traveling through Idaho’s high desert that they shouted Les bois! Les bois! (“The woods! The woods!”) Today, Boise lives up to this moniker, with over 45,000 trees in public spaces spread throughout the valley.
19. If all of Idaho’s mountains, hills, and gorges were ironed out flat, it’d be the largest state in the Lower 48.
Take that, Texas.
