The authors were asked not for comprehensive chronicles, nor for research monographs or new data for scholars. Bibliographies and footnotes are minimal. Each author was asked for a summing up—interpretive, sensitive, thoughtful, individual, even personal—of what seems significant about his or her state’s history. What distinguishes it? What has mattered about it, to its own people and to the rest of the nation? What has it come to now? —James Morton Smith, General Editor

Considerations more political than practical left Idaho strange in shape—like a pregnant capital L, as one observer said. With the state’s southeastern residents oriented toward Salt Lake City, Utah, and residents of the Idaho panhandle oriented toward Spokane, Washington, often it has seemed that only the capital at Boise and the Snake River system have held the state together. More than half of Idaho is owned by an outsider—the federal government—and the rest has never been densely populated. From Lewis and Clark on, early travelers to the region found its deserts and mountains forbiddingly inhospitable. But the mountains have yielded timber and rich mineral mines. The deserts have become productive farms through reclamation and irrigation projects of enormous magnitude. A kind of “irrigation democracy” also has won attention for the state beyond its borders, as has the awe-inspiring beauty that makes Idaho an attractive place to live.

In this series of provocative essays, nine specialists in early American history examine some of the more important aspects of the seventeenth-century colonial experience, presenting an impressive sampling of modern historical research on such topics as colonists and Indians, people and society, church and state, and history and historians.Originally published 1959.A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.

The authors were asked not for comprehensive chronicles, nor for research monographs or new data for scholars. Bibliographies and footnotes are minimal. Each author was asked for a summing up—interpretive, sensitive, thoughtful, individual, even personal—of what seems significant about his or her state’s history. What distinguishes it? What has mattered about it, to its own people and to the rest of the nation? What has it come to now? —James Morton Smith, General Editor

Considerations more political than practical left Idaho strange in shape—like a pregnant capital L, as one observer said. With the state’s southeastern residents oriented toward Salt Lake City, Utah, and residents of the Idaho panhandle oriented toward Spokane, Washington, often it has seemed that only the capital at Boise and the Snake River system have held the state together. More than half of Idaho is owned by an outsider—the federal government—and the rest has never been densely populated. From Lewis and Clark on, early travelers to the region found its deserts and mountains forbiddingly inhospitable. But the mountains have yielded timber and rich mineral mines. The deserts have become productive farms through reclamation and irrigation projects of enormous magnitude. A kind of “irrigation democracy” also has won attention for the state beyond its borders, as has the awe-inspiring beauty that makes Idaho an attractive place to live.

In this series of provocative essays, nine specialists in early American history examine some of the more important aspects of the seventeenth-century colonial experience, presenting an impressive sampling of modern historical research on such topics as colonists and Indians, people and society, church and state, and history and historians.Originally published 1959.A UNC Press Enduring Edition -- UNC Press Enduring Editions use the latest in digital technology to make available again books from our distinguished backlist that were previously out of print. These editions are published unaltered from the original, and are presented in affordable paperback formats, bringing readers both historical and cultural value.