Living in the valley today, it’s pretty easy to note the value of our bustling community. For the most part, it speaks for itself: acres of parks, miles of bike
paths, unending lines of trees, clean, safe streets—the list is endless.
A passerby could take one look and know what the hype was about.
But in 1861, it was a different story. Our interwoven web of
cityscape was no more than uninhabited brush that ferried
along a wide, sweeping river. It was the wild. Other than a
sparse population of scattered mining towns, Idaho was a
sprawling wilderness with only a hint of civilization. A
hard pitch to sell compared to what we could say about it
today. But one man knew there was potential here.
He could make it happen.
Wallace and the Wilderness
Idaho's first governor and the vision he shared with a very close friend