WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.089 So picture this. Before Europeans even really 00:00:04.089 --> 00:00:06.650 knew this place existed, you've got an undercover 00:00:06.650 --> 00:00:10.050 Pinkerton spy desperately cutting a hole through 00:00:10.050 --> 00:00:13.009 the floorboards of a mining camp bedroom, just 00:00:13.009 --> 00:00:15.990 to escape an armed mob of union workers. Which 00:00:15.990 --> 00:00:18.870 is just an incredible visual. It really is. And 00:00:18.870 --> 00:00:21.109 well, welcome to today's Deep Dive. Because if 00:00:21.109 --> 00:00:22.949 you're like most people, you probably associate 00:00:22.949 --> 00:00:26.170 the state of Idaho with quiet potato farms or 00:00:26.170 --> 00:00:28.469 maybe a ski trip. Right, the usual stereotypes. 00:00:28.550 --> 00:00:31.339 Exactly. But we are looking at this geographic 00:00:31.339 --> 00:00:34.039 fortress that actually holds some of the oldest 00:00:34.039 --> 00:00:37.539 human secrets in North America. Our mission today 00:00:37.539 --> 00:00:40.799 is to kind of unpack how one of the most unforgiving 00:00:40.799 --> 00:00:44.079 landscapes in the lower 48 forged a history full 00:00:44.079 --> 00:00:46.420 of shocking contradictions. I mean, we're talking 00:00:46.420 --> 00:00:50.179 literal underground spy escapes, massive demographic 00:00:50.179 --> 00:00:53.060 surprises, and honestly, some of the bloodiest 00:00:53.060 --> 00:00:55.380 labor wars in American history. Yeah. And to 00:00:55.380 --> 00:00:57.020 really get this, you have to understand that 00:00:57.020 --> 00:00:58.939 the landscape itself is the main character in 00:00:58.939 --> 00:01:00.780 this story. Geography didn't just, you know, 00:01:00.979 --> 00:01:03.380 influence human destiny here. It dictated it 00:01:03.380 --> 00:01:06.159 entirely. He was the boss. Absolutely. The sheer 00:01:06.159 --> 00:01:08.579 scale of the mountains, the impassable river 00:01:08.579 --> 00:01:12.000 canyons, it acts as this primary antagonist. 00:01:12.459 --> 00:01:14.299 Every historical event we're going to look at 00:01:14.299 --> 00:01:17.459 today. from ancient settlements to modern political 00:01:17.459 --> 00:01:20.239 fractures is a direct result of people either 00:01:20.239 --> 00:01:22.920 trying to conquer that terrain or just being 00:01:22.920 --> 00:01:25.900 trapped by it. Well, let's start with a timeline 00:01:25.900 --> 00:01:28.450 then. because the accepted narrative of American 00:01:28.450 --> 00:01:30.670 history gets completely flipped upside down when 00:01:30.670 --> 00:01:32.230 you look at the dirt along the Salmon River. 00:01:32.530 --> 00:01:34.969 Oh, yeah, completely. Because, like, we usually 00:01:34.969 --> 00:01:37.189 think of European exploration pushing west in 00:01:37.189 --> 00:01:40.230 the 1700s and 1800s, and that they did arrive 00:01:40.230 --> 00:01:43.189 incredibly late here. I mean, the Lewis and Clark 00:01:43.189 --> 00:01:44.930 expedition didn't even breach the Bitterroot 00:01:44.930 --> 00:01:47.650 Mountains into present -day Idaho until, what, 00:01:47.670 --> 00:01:50.650 August of 1805. Yeah, 1805, which, by the way, 00:01:50.670 --> 00:01:52.969 was a grueling near -death experience for them. 00:01:53.209 --> 00:01:55.829 But while that European story is remarkably recent, 00:01:56.120 --> 00:02:01.500 The human story is staggeringly ancient. It's 00:02:01.500 --> 00:02:04.760 wild. At a site called Cooper's Ferry, archaeologists 00:02:04.760 --> 00:02:08.099 have unearthed these stone tools and fragmented 00:02:08.099 --> 00:02:11.159 animal bones that completely rewrite the timeline 00:02:11.159 --> 00:02:14.379 of human migration. Radiocarbon dating places 00:02:14.379 --> 00:02:18.060 human presence there at roughly 16 ,600 years 00:02:18.060 --> 00:02:20.439 ago. 16 ,000 years. I mean, just to put that 00:02:20.439 --> 00:02:22.840 in perspective for you listening, that predates 00:02:22.840 --> 00:02:26.139 the Great Pyramids of Giza by over 12 millennia. 00:02:26.240 --> 00:02:28.800 It's monumental. It really stands as some of 00:02:28.800 --> 00:02:31.719 the oldest definitive evidence of human occupation 00:02:31.719 --> 00:02:34.240 anywhere in North America. Wow. And it challenges 00:02:34.240 --> 00:02:36.300 that old textbook theory, you know, that the 00:02:36.300 --> 00:02:38.800 first Americans simply walked down an ice -free 00:02:38.800 --> 00:02:40.780 corridor in the middle of the continent. Right, 00:02:40.780 --> 00:02:43.180 the whole land bridge idea. Exactly. Finding 00:02:43.180 --> 00:02:45.960 artifacts this old, nestled in the river valleys 00:02:45.960 --> 00:02:49.020 of the Pacific Northwest, it suggests these early 00:02:49.020 --> 00:02:51.000 populations might have traveled down the Pacific 00:02:51.000 --> 00:02:54.099 Coast and then followed the rivers inland. And 00:02:54.099 --> 00:02:56.159 Cooper's Ferry isn't just an isolated anomaly 00:02:56.159 --> 00:02:59.439 either. There's more. Oh yeah. Excavations at 00:02:59.439 --> 00:03:02.120 Wilson Butte Cave near Twin Falls have also revealed 00:03:02.120 --> 00:03:04.560 arrowheads and human artifacts that rank among 00:03:04.560 --> 00:03:07.199 the oldest on the continent. So this land that 00:03:07.199 --> 00:03:09.560 would eventually become home to the Nez Perce, 00:03:09.840 --> 00:03:12.319 the Coeur d 'Alene, the Shoshone and the Bannock 00:03:12.319 --> 00:03:15.800 peoples, it was thriving thousands of years before 00:03:15.800 --> 00:03:18.840 a European boot ever touched the soil. Okay so 00:03:18.840 --> 00:03:21.689 then those boots do finally show up right? And 00:03:21.689 --> 00:03:24.330 the immediate reaction from early explorers seems 00:03:24.330 --> 00:03:27.449 to be pure hubris followed by absolute disaster. 00:03:27.629 --> 00:03:29.550 That is a very good way to put it. Enter the 00:03:29.550 --> 00:03:31.770 fur traders. You have the Hudson's Bay Company 00:03:31.770 --> 00:03:34.250 sending a man named Donald McKenzie into the 00:03:34.250 --> 00:03:37.650 region around 1819. And he basically looks at 00:03:37.650 --> 00:03:40.050 the map and decides, yep, I'm going to establish 00:03:40.050 --> 00:03:43.409 a reliable, navigable water route. for trading 00:03:43.409 --> 00:03:45.349 right up the Snake River. Right, which sounds 00:03:45.349 --> 00:03:47.689 great on paper. So he attempted to bring these 00:03:47.689 --> 00:03:49.789 heavily loaded boats up from the Columbia River, 00:03:49.990 --> 00:03:51.629 through the Grand Canyon and the Snake River, 00:03:51.710 --> 00:03:54.469 and past Hells Canyon. And Hells Canyon is no 00:03:54.469 --> 00:03:57.050 joke. No, it's the deepest river gorge in North 00:03:57.050 --> 00:03:59.409 America. It actually plunges deeper than the 00:03:59.409 --> 00:04:02.129 Grand Canyon in Arizona. Which is insane. Trying 00:04:02.129 --> 00:04:04.189 to run commercial freight up Hells Canyon in 00:04:04.189 --> 00:04:07.569 1819 is basically like trying to paddle a fragile 00:04:07.569 --> 00:04:11.310 canoe of a giant, rocky, deadly waterslide. Exactly. 00:04:11.310 --> 00:04:14.139 It's just fun. impossible. The river is choked 00:04:14.139 --> 00:04:16.939 with rapids. The canyon walls are sheer rock. 00:04:17.800 --> 00:04:20.939 And, well, McKenzie very quickly realized his 00:04:20.939 --> 00:04:23.779 grand commercial highway was a death trap. Water 00:04:23.779 --> 00:04:26.000 transport was just a total failure. And that 00:04:26.000 --> 00:04:28.100 realization of limits becomes a recurring theme 00:04:28.100 --> 00:04:31.180 here. The early American fur trappers, like Andrew 00:04:31.180 --> 00:04:33.500 Henry, who built a tiny short -lived fort in 00:04:33.500 --> 00:04:36.790 1810, They learned the exact same hard lesson. 00:04:37.050 --> 00:04:39.529 You just cannot tame this terrain. The land always 00:04:39.529 --> 00:04:42.029 wins. Right. The supply lines back east were 00:04:42.029 --> 00:04:44.850 impossibly long, the winters were brutal, and 00:04:44.850 --> 00:04:47.089 the rivers absolutely refused to cooperate. But 00:04:47.089 --> 00:04:50.110 where commerce fails, ideology sometimes pushes 00:04:50.110 --> 00:04:52.370 through. Because a few decades later, the missionaries 00:04:52.370 --> 00:04:54.350 arrive, and they bring this bizarre combination 00:04:54.350 --> 00:04:56.370 of firsts to the wilderness. They really do. 00:04:56.670 --> 00:04:59.350 Reverend Henry H. Spalding shows up in 1836. 00:04:59.639 --> 00:05:02.000 And this guy establishes a Protestant mission, 00:05:02.220 --> 00:05:04.699 sure, but he also builds the region's first school, 00:05:05.240 --> 00:05:07.480 engineers a working irrigation system, brings 00:05:07.480 --> 00:05:10.120 in a printing press to publish the Northwest's 00:05:10.120 --> 00:05:12.639 first book, and crucially for the state's future 00:05:12.639 --> 00:05:15.079 identity, he plants the very first potatoes. 00:05:15.370 --> 00:05:18.670 The famous Idaho potato is born. Exactly. Meanwhile, 00:05:18.930 --> 00:05:21.230 further north, you have Catholic missionaries 00:05:21.230 --> 00:05:23.750 working with the Coeur d 'Alene people to build 00:05:23.750 --> 00:05:26.930 the Cataldo mission in the 1840s and 50s. And 00:05:26.930 --> 00:05:29.189 this is cool. It remains the oldest standing 00:05:29.189 --> 00:05:32.449 building in Idaho today. Really? Yeah. And the 00:05:32.449 --> 00:05:34.550 architectural ingenuity is just fascinating. 00:05:34.610 --> 00:05:37.029 It was designed by a man named Antonio Ravalli 00:05:37.029 --> 00:05:39.790 and built entirely without nails. Wait, OK, a 00:05:39.790 --> 00:05:42.689 massive multi -story mission building with literally 00:05:42.689 --> 00:05:45.620 no nails. How does that even stay standing? So 00:05:45.620 --> 00:05:48.480 they use a technique called waddle and daub because, 00:05:48.600 --> 00:05:50.639 think about it, transporting heavy iron crates 00:05:50.639 --> 00:05:52.939 of nails over the Rocky Mountains on pack animals 00:05:52.939 --> 00:05:55.420 was logistically impossible. Oh sure, that makes 00:05:55.420 --> 00:05:58.459 sense. So instead they wove this tight lattice 00:05:58.459 --> 00:06:00.899 of wooden branches, that's the waddle, and then 00:06:00.899 --> 00:06:03.300 they plastered it with a thick, sticky mixture 00:06:03.300 --> 00:06:07.620 of mud, clay, straw, and sometimes animal dung. 00:06:07.939 --> 00:06:10.500 That's the daub. Wow. And it bakes into this 00:06:10.500 --> 00:06:14.139 remarkably durable cement -like wall. It's just 00:06:14.139 --> 00:06:16.519 a perfect example of the environment forcing 00:06:16.519 --> 00:06:19.439 human adaptation. You couldn't bring the industrial 00:06:19.439 --> 00:06:21.639 world with you, so you had to build with what 00:06:21.639 --> 00:06:24.040 the earth provided. But then that isolation starts 00:06:24.040 --> 00:06:27.220 to crack, right? Around 1860, The discovery of 00:06:27.220 --> 00:06:29.579 gold acts like this giant magnet and suddenly 00:06:29.579 --> 00:06:32.500 this impenetrable fortress is just flooded with 00:06:32.500 --> 00:06:34.480 people. Yeah, the gold rush changes everything. 00:06:34.639 --> 00:06:36.860 But because the terrain is so difficult, these 00:06:36.860 --> 00:06:39.339 new arrivals don't spread out evenly. They get 00:06:39.339 --> 00:06:41.540 funneled into these hyper -isolated pockets, 00:06:41.920 --> 00:06:44.660 creating this really unlikely and volatile melting 00:06:44.660 --> 00:06:47.339 pot. And the sheer confusion of this early settlement 00:06:47.339 --> 00:06:49.860 period is best illustrated by the very first 00:06:49.860 --> 00:06:52.300 organized town in Idaho, a place called Franklin. 00:06:52.459 --> 00:06:55.110 I love this story. It's so funny. It was settled 00:06:55.110 --> 00:06:58.430 in 1860 by a group of Mormon pioneers who were 00:06:58.430 --> 00:07:01.250 pushing north. They set up homes, they laid out 00:07:01.250 --> 00:07:04.310 streets, built a community, and they had the 00:07:04.310 --> 00:07:06.269 absolute conviction that they were still residing 00:07:06.269 --> 00:07:08.430 comfortably within the borders of Utah. I am 00:07:08.430 --> 00:07:10.589 genuinely stuck on the mechanics of this. Yeah. 00:07:10.910 --> 00:07:13.670 How do you accidentally build an entire town 00:07:13.670 --> 00:07:15.930 in the wrong territory? Were they just like guessing 00:07:15.930 --> 00:07:18.769 where the border was? Well... You have to picture 00:07:18.769 --> 00:07:22.149 the reality of 1860s map making. There were no 00:07:22.149 --> 00:07:25.149 GPS satellites. Surveyors were literally dragging 00:07:25.149 --> 00:07:28.230 metal measuring chains across thousands of miles 00:07:28.230 --> 00:07:31.449 of rugged mountains and sagebrush desert. And 00:07:31.449 --> 00:07:34.110 the official border was the 42nd parallel, which 00:07:34.110 --> 00:07:36.490 is an invisible mathematical concept. It's not 00:07:36.490 --> 00:07:38.230 a physical landmark like a river. Though they 00:07:38.230 --> 00:07:40.730 just overshot it. Exactly. A subsequent, more 00:07:40.730 --> 00:07:43.050 accurate survey finally revealed that the entire 00:07:43.050 --> 00:07:45.490 town of Franklin was actually sitting a good 00:07:45.490 --> 00:07:48.110 distance north of the Utah line. So the borders 00:07:48.110 --> 00:07:50.089 were basically just suggestions at that point. 00:07:50.689 --> 00:07:52.389 I mean, the whole region was once part of the 00:07:52.389 --> 00:07:55.850 massive unorganized Oregon country, claimed simultaneously 00:07:55.850 --> 00:07:58.170 by the U .S. and Great Britain. Then it got chopped 00:07:58.170 --> 00:08:00.410 up into the Oregon Territory, then Washington, 00:08:00.769 --> 00:08:03.810 then Dakota. By the time Abraham Lincoln officially 00:08:03.810 --> 00:08:07.170 created the Idaho Territory in 1863, it only 00:08:07.170 --> 00:08:10.550 had about 17 ,000 people. But it covered a landmass 00:08:10.550 --> 00:08:13.089 that included most of modern -day Montana and 00:08:13.089 --> 00:08:16.410 Wyoming. And those 17 ,000 people were incredibly 00:08:16.410 --> 00:08:19.069 diverse. A fifth of the territory was composed 00:08:19.069 --> 00:08:22.730 of English immigrants. You had massive influxes 00:08:22.730 --> 00:08:25.110 of German farmers. Oh, wow. Yeah, to the point 00:08:25.110 --> 00:08:27.290 where German was actually the primary spoken 00:08:27.290 --> 00:08:29.810 language in several northern communities all 00:08:29.810 --> 00:08:32.389 the way until the outbreak of World War I. You 00:08:32.389 --> 00:08:35.490 also had Irish Catholic laborers pouring into 00:08:35.490 --> 00:08:37.629 Boise to work the rail center. And you had a 00:08:37.629 --> 00:08:40.549 huge wave of Basque immigrants, too. Yes. Which 00:08:40.549 --> 00:08:43.639 you might wonder why Boise. Well, The rugged 00:08:43.639 --> 00:08:46.100 mountainous terrain of southern Idaho closely 00:08:46.100 --> 00:08:48.840 mirrored the Pyrenees Mountains back in the Iberian 00:08:48.840 --> 00:08:51.480 Peninsula. It felt like home to them. Exactly. 00:08:51.779 --> 00:08:53.580 It was the perfect environment for their traditional 00:08:53.580 --> 00:08:55.759 sheep herding. And they built what remains one 00:08:55.759 --> 00:08:57.799 of the largest bass communities in the United 00:08:57.799 --> 00:09:00.259 States today. But even more striking is the Chinese 00:09:00.259 --> 00:09:03.259 population. Right. This was surprising. By 1870, 00:09:03.580 --> 00:09:06.600 Chinese immigrants made up almost 30 % of Idaho's 00:09:06.600 --> 00:09:09.059 total population. They had initially arrived 00:09:09.059 --> 00:09:11.100 through San Francisco and moved inland to work 00:09:11.100 --> 00:09:13.279 the plaster mines and lay the railroad tracks. 00:09:13.539 --> 00:09:15.639 Thirty percent is a massive demographic footprint. 00:09:15.840 --> 00:09:19.379 Huge. Though, of course, they faced intense institutionalized 00:09:19.379 --> 00:09:21.360 discrimination from groups like the Anti -Chinese 00:09:21.360 --> 00:09:24.820 League. So you have this powder keg of diverse 00:09:24.820 --> 00:09:28.379 cultures all pouring into a territory that is 00:09:28.379 --> 00:09:30.299 politically unstable and physically divided. 00:09:30.460 --> 00:09:33.759 And this tension completely snaps in 1864 when 00:09:33.759 --> 00:09:35.720 they decide to move the territorial capital. 00:09:35.899 --> 00:09:38.730 Yeah, this was a mess. The capital was originally 00:09:38.730 --> 00:09:41.529 in Lewiston up in the northern panhandle, but 00:09:41.529 --> 00:09:43.649 the power brokers decided to move it south to 00:09:43.649 --> 00:09:46.809 Boise. Moving a capital city today is a bureaucratic 00:09:46.809 --> 00:09:49.250 headache. Moving it from Lewiston to Boise in 00:09:49.250 --> 00:09:52.929 1864 before highways or telephones. That's like 00:09:52.929 --> 00:09:54.570 putting your government headquarters behind a 00:09:54.570 --> 00:09:57.250 10 ,000 foot ice wall. It really is. The Sawtooth 00:09:57.250 --> 00:09:59.470 Mountains and the Salmon River Gorge sit directly 00:09:59.470 --> 00:10:01.710 between the two cities. You couldn't just take 00:10:01.710 --> 00:10:04.470 a carriage ride south. The terrain was literally 00:10:04.470 --> 00:10:07.360 impassable for half the year. And the communication 00:10:07.360 --> 00:10:10.259 breakdown was catastrophic. Yeah. The northern 00:10:10.259 --> 00:10:12.379 and southern halves of the territory were effectively 00:10:12.379 --> 00:10:15.299 cut off from each other. Natural. This geographic 00:10:15.299 --> 00:10:17.799 isolation bred such deep political resentment 00:10:17.799 --> 00:10:20.919 that it actually led to pieces of the Idaho territory 00:10:20.919 --> 00:10:23.220 being carved off and given away just to help 00:10:23.220 --> 00:10:25.539 form the modern, slightly more manageable borders 00:10:25.539 --> 00:10:28.720 of Washington, Wyoming and Montana. OK, so the 00:10:28.720 --> 00:10:31.740 borders finally get locked in and statehood is 00:10:31.740 --> 00:10:35.179 achieved in 1890. But the violence doesn't stop, 00:10:35.419 --> 00:10:38.179 it just shifts focus. Because once the population 00:10:38.179 --> 00:10:41.440 settles, the objective becomes extracting the 00:10:41.440 --> 00:10:43.360 unimaginable wealth buried in those mountains. 00:10:43.909 --> 00:10:47.230 We are talking about the cura deline silver boom. 00:10:47.230 --> 00:10:50.649 Oh the wealth was staggering between 1860 and 00:10:50.649 --> 00:10:53.830 1866 Idaho produced nearly a fifth of all the 00:10:53.830 --> 00:10:55.990 gold in the United States, but silver was the 00:10:55.990 --> 00:10:59.710 real Titan Roughly 80 % of Idaho's total historical 00:10:59.710 --> 00:11:02.049 metallic wealth came from the silver veins up 00:11:02.049 --> 00:11:04.370 in the cura deline region But generating that 00:11:04.370 --> 00:11:06.250 kind of wealth required a massive industrial 00:11:06.250 --> 00:11:08.809 machine and that machine required human labor 00:11:08.809 --> 00:11:11.389 working in horrific conditions which sets the 00:11:11.389 --> 00:11:15.840 stage for the miners uprisings of in 1899. And 00:11:15.840 --> 00:11:18.100 we should be clear, this wasn't some stereotypical 00:11:18.100 --> 00:11:21.059 saloon shootout. This was organized, unionized 00:11:21.059 --> 00:11:23.539 miners from the Western Federation of Miners 00:11:23.539 --> 00:11:26.759 going to war against heavily armed private company 00:11:26.759 --> 00:11:29.460 guards. Yeah, it was a literal war. They were 00:11:29.460 --> 00:11:31.460 fighting over the defining issues of the modern 00:11:31.460 --> 00:11:33.970 labor movement. you know, the right to unionize 00:11:33.970 --> 00:11:36.669 maximum working hours and fair pay. Right. But 00:11:36.669 --> 00:11:38.769 because they were fighting in this remote high 00:11:38.769 --> 00:11:41.149 -stakes environment, the tactics escalated into 00:11:41.149 --> 00:11:44.850 outright warfare. In 1892, striking miners actually 00:11:44.850 --> 00:11:47.250 blew up the Frisco mine with dynamite. Wow. And 00:11:47.250 --> 00:11:50.769 then in 1899, an angry mob converged on the Bunker 00:11:50.769 --> 00:11:53.690 Hill mining complex, loaded a massive amount 00:11:53.690 --> 00:11:56.529 of explosives into the mill, and completely leveled 00:11:56.529 --> 00:11:58.929 it, killing two company men in the process. And 00:11:58.929 --> 00:12:01.429 the response was brutal. The federal government 00:12:01.429 --> 00:12:03.570 and the state governor sent in the National Guard 00:12:03.570 --> 00:12:05.929 rounded up hundreds of union miners and threw 00:12:05.929 --> 00:12:08.690 them into literal bullpens without trial. The 00:12:08.690 --> 00:12:11.789 paranoia on both sides was absolute. Oh, completely. 00:12:12.429 --> 00:12:14.809 The mine owners were hiring undercover agents 00:12:14.809 --> 00:12:17.590 to infiltrate the unions. Which brings us back 00:12:17.590 --> 00:12:19.490 to the cinematic escape we talk about at the 00:12:19.490 --> 00:12:22.330 beginning, Charlie Seringo. Yes, Charlie Seringo. 00:12:22.549 --> 00:12:25.269 He was a famous Pinkerton detective working deep 00:12:25.269 --> 00:12:27.549 undercover for the mine operators in the town 00:12:27.549 --> 00:12:30.970 of Gem. He was posing as a sympathetic miner, 00:12:31.110 --> 00:12:33.590 you know, gathering intelligence and secretly 00:12:33.590 --> 00:12:35.789 reporting back to the owners. And when his cover 00:12:35.789 --> 00:12:39.590 was finally blown, an armed mob of furious union 00:12:39.590 --> 00:12:43.029 men marched straight on his boarding house. So 00:12:43.029 --> 00:12:45.409 Seringo is trapped in his room, listening to 00:12:45.409 --> 00:12:47.950 them coming up for him. It's terrifying. But 00:12:47.950 --> 00:12:49.990 instead of shooting his way out, he takes a saw, 00:12:50.429 --> 00:12:52.669 cuts a hole directly through his wooden floorboards, 00:12:53.049 --> 00:12:55.070 drops down into the crawl space, and just slips 00:12:55.070 --> 00:12:57.750 away under the town's raised wooden sidewalks 00:12:57.750 --> 00:13:00.070 while the mob is literally tearing his room apart 00:13:00.070 --> 00:13:02.509 right above his head. It's a literal espionage 00:13:02.509 --> 00:13:04.970 thriller playing out in a dusty mining camp. 00:13:05.009 --> 00:13:07.570 It really is. But the conflict doesn't end in 00:13:07.570 --> 00:13:10.529 the camps. The violence reaches the highest levels 00:13:10.529 --> 00:13:13.559 of state government. In 1905, former Governor 00:13:13.559 --> 00:13:15.580 Frank Steinenberg opened the front gate of his 00:13:15.580 --> 00:13:17.740 home and triggered a rigged bomb that killed 00:13:17.740 --> 00:13:21.019 him instantly. Good Lord. The bomb was planted 00:13:21.019 --> 00:13:24.220 by a man named Harry Orchard, right? Yes. Because 00:13:24.220 --> 00:13:26.639 Steinenberg had initially been elected on a platform 00:13:26.639 --> 00:13:30.009 that was friendly to labor. But when the 1899 00:13:30.009 --> 00:13:33.169 Bunker Hill Mill was blown up, he was the governor 00:13:33.169 --> 00:13:35.990 who declared martial law and called in the federal 00:13:35.990 --> 00:13:38.389 troops to crush the strike. Right. He flipped. 00:13:38.649 --> 00:13:41.029 So Orchard claimed he rigged the bomb as revenge 00:13:41.029 --> 00:13:44.269 for that betrayal. And also because the declaration 00:13:44.269 --> 00:13:47.049 of martial law had caused him to lose a gambling 00:13:47.049 --> 00:13:49.409 stake in a highly lucrative silver mine. And 00:13:49.409 --> 00:13:52.250 this assassination triggered the 1907 trial of 00:13:52.250 --> 00:13:55.669 the century. You have Senator William Borah acting 00:13:55.669 --> 00:13:58.230 as the prosecutor going up against Clarence Darrow 00:13:58.230 --> 00:14:00.710 for the defense. OK, for context, Clarence Darrow 00:14:00.710 --> 00:14:03.129 showing up in Boise is a massive deal. He was 00:14:03.129 --> 00:14:05.070 arguably the most famous defense attorney in 00:14:05.070 --> 00:14:07.070 American history. Oh, yeah. His presence meant 00:14:07.070 --> 00:14:09.830 the eyes of the entire nation and the national 00:14:09.830 --> 00:14:12.690 press were suddenly locked onto this remote mountain 00:14:12.690 --> 00:14:15.669 courtroom. The prosecution tried to prove that 00:14:15.669 --> 00:14:18.590 the top union leaders had orchestrated the assassination 00:14:18.590 --> 00:14:22.429 and basically used Orchard as a hitman. But Darrow 00:14:22.429 --> 00:14:25.289 systematically dismantled that narrative. He 00:14:25.289 --> 00:14:28.070 argued that Orchard was actually a paid informant 00:14:28.070 --> 00:14:30.309 operating on behalf of the mine owners themselves 00:14:30.309 --> 00:14:33.610 trying to frame the union. Wow, what a twist. 00:14:33.769 --> 00:14:36.629 And it worked. Darrow's defense secured acquittals 00:14:36.629 --> 00:14:39.480 for the union leaders. Harry Orchard, who had 00:14:39.480 --> 00:14:41.720 confessed to planting the bomb, spent the rest 00:14:41.720 --> 00:14:44.279 of his life in an Idaho penitentiary. So you 00:14:44.279 --> 00:14:47.580 have this intense, radical, almost militant political 00:14:47.580 --> 00:14:50.320 energy brewing in these isolated mountains. But 00:14:50.320 --> 00:14:52.039 what's really fascinating is that this energy 00:14:52.039 --> 00:14:55.159 doesn't just evaporate after the trials. It funnels 00:14:55.159 --> 00:14:58.039 directly into the state legislature, transforming 00:14:58.039 --> 00:15:00.620 Idaho into a testing ground for some of the most 00:15:00.620 --> 00:15:03.190 extreme political experiments of the era. Yeah, 00:15:03.389 --> 00:15:05.909 at the turn of the century, Idaho became an aggressive 00:15:05.909 --> 00:15:08.269 early adopter of the progressive agenda. Way 00:15:08.269 --> 00:15:11.179 ahead of the curve on some things. Exactly. Decades 00:15:11.179 --> 00:15:13.700 before the federal government acted, Idaho granted 00:15:13.700 --> 00:15:16.799 women the right to vote in 1896. They enacted 00:15:16.799 --> 00:15:20.840 statewide alcohol prohibition in 1916. They heavily 00:15:20.840 --> 00:15:23.879 backed the populist movement, demanding the unrestricted 00:15:23.879 --> 00:15:26.639 coinage of silver to disrupt the East Coast banking 00:15:26.639 --> 00:15:29.679 monopolies. But there is a profoundly dark side 00:15:29.679 --> 00:15:32.659 to this era of rapid, sweeping legislative reform. 00:15:33.440 --> 00:15:35.080 While they were expanding the vote, they were 00:15:35.080 --> 00:15:38.759 also exploring eugenics. In 1919, the legislature 00:15:38.759 --> 00:15:41.779 actually passed a bill to legalize the forced 00:15:41.779 --> 00:15:44.559 sterilization of individuals confined in state 00:15:44.559 --> 00:15:47.879 institutions. Right. Now, that 1919 bill was 00:15:47.879 --> 00:15:51.320 vetoed by Governor D .W. Davis. He cited serious 00:15:51.320 --> 00:15:53.679 flaws in the underlying science and argued forcefully 00:15:53.679 --> 00:15:56.200 that the law was a blatant violation of the Equal 00:15:56.200 --> 00:15:58.100 Protection Clause of the U .S. Constitution. 00:15:58.220 --> 00:16:00.440 He shut it down. He did. But the legislature 00:16:00.440 --> 00:16:03.500 was determined. By 1925, they passed a revised 00:16:03.500 --> 00:16:06.320 Eugenics Act. The language was explicitly engineered 00:16:06.320 --> 00:16:08.720 to bypass the governor's previous constitutional 00:16:08.720 --> 00:16:11.940 objections. That is unsettling. It is. They established 00:16:11.940 --> 00:16:15.000 a formal state board of eugenics, granting them 00:16:15.000 --> 00:16:17.860 the legal authority to forcibly sterilize people 00:16:17.860 --> 00:16:20.879 they categorized as, and I quote, feeble minded, 00:16:21.039 --> 00:16:24.500 insane, epileptics and habitual criminals. Essentially, 00:16:24.759 --> 00:16:27.120 anyone the board decided was a biological menace 00:16:27.120 --> 00:16:29.120 to the future of society. And this wasn't just 00:16:29.120 --> 00:16:33.610 on paper. No. Between 1932 and 1964, 30 women 00:16:33.610 --> 00:16:36.210 and eight men were subjected to forced sterilization 00:16:36.210 --> 00:16:38.629 under the authority of this board. And the law 00:16:38.629 --> 00:16:40.470 remained officially on the state books until 00:16:40.470 --> 00:16:44.149 it was quietly repealed in 1972. See, I really 00:16:44.149 --> 00:16:46.669 struggle to square this circle. How does the 00:16:46.669 --> 00:16:49.289 exact same political movement champion the expansion 00:16:49.289 --> 00:16:52.490 of women's voting rights while simultaneously 00:16:52.490 --> 00:16:55.870 legalizing the forced surgical sterilization 00:16:55.870 --> 00:16:57.629 of its own citizens? I mean, we use the word 00:16:57.629 --> 00:17:00.149 progressive today. Those two concepts seem entirely 00:17:00.149 --> 00:17:02.870 mutually exclusive. They really do. But it reveals 00:17:02.870 --> 00:17:04.950 a critical truth about the mindset of that era. 00:17:05.329 --> 00:17:07.410 At the time, progress wasn't just about expanding 00:17:07.410 --> 00:17:09.769 rights. It was about applying hard clinical science 00:17:09.769 --> 00:17:12.430 to engineer a better society. Right. Eugenics 00:17:12.430 --> 00:17:14.930 was championed by many leading intellectuals 00:17:14.930 --> 00:17:17.670 as a necessary public health measure. And for 00:17:17.670 --> 00:17:19.789 you listening, it serves as a stark historical 00:17:19.789 --> 00:17:23.269 warning. Progress is rarely a straight moral 00:17:23.269 --> 00:17:26.009 line. Policies that are celebrated by lawmakers 00:17:26.009 --> 00:17:28.250 as cutting edge reform in one generation can 00:17:28.250 --> 00:17:31.589 be widely recognized as severe human rights violations 00:17:31.589 --> 00:17:34.089 in the next. It's a huge lesson. It really highlights 00:17:34.089 --> 00:17:36.769 the danger of unchecked ideological momentum, 00:17:37.190 --> 00:17:39.529 especially in an isolated environment where dissenting 00:17:39.529 --> 00:17:42.650 voices are so easily drowned. And that geographic 00:17:42.650 --> 00:17:45.670 isolation and the fractured identity it creates, 00:17:45.869 --> 00:17:48.690 it didn't end with the 20th century. Even today, 00:17:48.750 --> 00:17:51.509 the terrain still dictates reality. Always. The 00:17:51.509 --> 00:17:54.750 center of Idaho remains this imposing block of 00:17:54.750 --> 00:17:57.430 sparsely populated national forests and jagged 00:17:57.430 --> 00:17:59.349 mountain ranges. Yeah. I mean, if you live in 00:17:59.349 --> 00:18:01.410 the northern panhandle and want to drive to the 00:18:01.410 --> 00:18:04.609 capital in Boise, you are often forced to physically 00:18:04.609 --> 00:18:06.630 leave the state, cross over into Washington or 00:18:06.630 --> 00:18:08.930 Oregon, and drive south on their highways just 00:18:08.930 --> 00:18:11.730 to bypass the central mountains. It's crazy. 00:18:12.410 --> 00:18:15.430 And that physical divide creates a profound cultural 00:18:15.430 --> 00:18:18.750 fracture. The cities in the north naturally gravitate 00:18:18.750 --> 00:18:20.970 economically and culturally towards Spokane, 00:18:20.970 --> 00:18:23.769 Washington. The heavily Mormon population in 00:18:23.769 --> 00:18:25.650 the southeast naturally aligns with Salt Lake 00:18:25.650 --> 00:18:28.410 City, Utah. And Boise just sits in the middle, 00:18:28.589 --> 00:18:31.150 functioning almost entirely as an isolated city 00:18:31.150 --> 00:18:33.470 -state cut off from its own borders. And when 00:18:33.470 --> 00:18:35.309 a state is fractured into these disconnected 00:18:35.309 --> 00:18:39.009 pockets, it creates safe havens for extreme ideologies. 00:18:39.450 --> 00:18:42.930 We saw this in the 1980s and 90s when the dense 00:18:42.930 --> 00:18:45.529 remote forests of the northern panhandle became 00:18:45.529 --> 00:18:48.509 a magnet for right -wing extremists and neo -Nazi 00:18:48.509 --> 00:18:50.230 survivalist groups. Yeah, people who wanted to 00:18:50.230 --> 00:18:52.390 drop off the grid entirely flocked to the region, 00:18:52.609 --> 00:18:55.849 most notably the Aryan nations who built a heavily 00:18:55.849 --> 00:18:58.289 fortified compound near Hayden Lake. And this 00:18:58.289 --> 00:19:00.910 tension violently erupted into the national consciousness 00:19:00.910 --> 00:19:04.009 in 1992 with the Ruby Ridge standoff. Right. 00:19:04.170 --> 00:19:06.710 It began over a failure to appear in court for 00:19:06.710 --> 00:19:08.829 a weapons charge, and it escalated into this 00:19:08.829 --> 00:19:11.690 massive siege involving U .S. Marshals, the FBI, 00:19:12.190 --> 00:19:14.210 and white separatist Randy Weaver and his family 00:19:14.210 --> 00:19:17.109 in an isolated cabin near Naples, Idaho. And 00:19:17.109 --> 00:19:20.029 the resulting firefight, which left a U .S. Marshal, 00:19:20.230 --> 00:19:23.539 Weaver's wife, and his young son dead. It ignited 00:19:23.539 --> 00:19:26.359 a massive ongoing national debate regarding the 00:19:26.359 --> 00:19:28.859 limits and ethics of acceptable force used by 00:19:28.859 --> 00:19:31.140 the federal government against its own citizens. 00:19:31.180 --> 00:19:34.420 Is it a defining moment? It was. But the state's 00:19:34.420 --> 00:19:37.279 modern history also includes a forceful repudiation 00:19:37.279 --> 00:19:41.039 of that extremism. In 2001, following a successful 00:19:41.039 --> 00:19:43.980 civil rights lawsuit, the Aryan nation's compound 00:19:43.980 --> 00:19:46.759 was legally confiscated, which bankrupted the 00:19:46.759 --> 00:19:48.720 organization and drove them out of the state 00:19:48.720 --> 00:19:51.319 entirely. Wow. And around that same time, down 00:19:51.319 --> 00:19:54.710 in the capital, Boise erected a massive stone 00:19:54.710 --> 00:19:57.410 human rights memorial featuring a bronze statue 00:19:57.410 --> 00:20:00.589 of Anne Frank, actively cementing a counter narrative 00:20:00.589 --> 00:20:03.529 of equality and inclusion. So it's a state locked 00:20:03.529 --> 00:20:05.930 in a constant wrestling match with its own extremes. 00:20:06.430 --> 00:20:09.130 And that unique city -state isolation actually 00:20:09.130 --> 00:20:11.390 played a surprisingly critical role in the modern 00:20:11.390 --> 00:20:13.890 era, specifically during the arrival of the COVID 00:20:13.890 --> 00:20:16.750 -19 pandemic in early 2020. Yeah, because you 00:20:16.750 --> 00:20:19.210 might assume that a ragged sparsely populated 00:20:19.210 --> 00:20:21.470 isolated state would be one of the last places 00:20:21.319 --> 00:20:23.220 a global virus would reach. That would be the 00:20:23.220 --> 00:20:25.940 logical guess, yeah. But isolation in the modern 00:20:25.940 --> 00:20:29.400 world often means a heavy reliance on a few major 00:20:29.400 --> 00:20:32.460 transit hubs. Right. The state's first confirmed 00:20:32.460 --> 00:20:35.700 case wasn't someone slowly traveling across the 00:20:35.700 --> 00:20:38.960 plains in a wagon. It was a woman from the southwestern 00:20:38.960 --> 00:20:41.500 part of the state who contracted the virus while 00:20:41.500 --> 00:20:43.539 attending a conference in New York City. Yep. 00:20:43.799 --> 00:20:46.900 Because Boise is so physically isolated from 00:20:46.900 --> 00:20:49.440 surrounding major cities, business professionals 00:20:49.440 --> 00:20:52.839 have to fly in and out constantly. So the geographic 00:20:52.839 --> 00:20:56.369 fortress couldn't stop an airplane. An infection 00:20:56.369 --> 00:20:58.730 contracted in the densest city on the East Coast 00:20:58.730 --> 00:21:01.509 flew directly into the heart of the state. Within 00:21:01.509 --> 00:21:04.450 24 hours, a second case was confirmed in a completely 00:21:04.450 --> 00:21:06.950 different county. And within a matter of days, 00:21:07.190 --> 00:21:09.089 health officials were announcing the first known 00:21:09.089 --> 00:21:11.789 cases of untraceable community spread. Which 00:21:11.789 --> 00:21:13.549 brings us right back to the central question 00:21:13.549 --> 00:21:15.930 we've been circling this entire time. How do 00:21:15.930 --> 00:21:18.750 you forge a single unified identity when the 00:21:18.750 --> 00:21:21.549 very ground you stand on constantly pulls you 00:21:21.549 --> 00:21:24.339 apart? It's the ultimate question here. We've 00:21:24.339 --> 00:21:27.079 traveled from ancient campfires burning 16 ,000 00:21:27.079 --> 00:21:29.720 years ago at Cooper's Ferry, past fur traders 00:21:29.720 --> 00:21:32.480 trying to run rapids and canoes, through chaotic 00:21:32.480 --> 00:21:36.000 border surveying, explosive labor wars, and complex 00:21:36.000 --> 00:21:38.759 political reforms, all the way to a modern landscape 00:21:38.759 --> 00:21:42.160 that is still deeply physically divided. It really 00:21:42.160 --> 00:21:44.839 is a compelling history of resistance and adaptation. 00:21:45.069 --> 00:21:47.049 And actually, consider this final thought before 00:21:47.049 --> 00:21:49.930 we go. Think about the mining towns of Silver 00:21:49.930 --> 00:21:53.690 City or Rocky Bar. In the late 1800s, these were 00:21:53.690 --> 00:21:56.369 booming, vital centers of industry. They were 00:21:56.369 --> 00:21:59.190 the economic engines driving the territory, generating 00:21:59.190 --> 00:22:01.930 unimaginable wealth, and pulling thousands of 00:22:01.930 --> 00:22:03.869 people into the mountains. They were everything. 00:22:03.970 --> 00:22:07.109 Right. But today, the wind blows through empty 00:22:07.109 --> 00:22:10.150 wooden buildings. They are literal ghost towns, 00:22:10.549 --> 00:22:13.049 abandoned when the silver ran out, quietly being 00:22:13.049 --> 00:22:15.779 swallowed back up by the harsh landscape. It 00:22:15.779 --> 00:22:18.019 forces you to look at our own bustling modern 00:22:18.019 --> 00:22:20.099 cities today with their sprawling suburbs and 00:22:20.099 --> 00:22:22.059 crowded highways and wonder which of them are 00:22:22.059 --> 00:22:24.500 permanent fixtures and which are just temporary 00:22:24.500 --> 00:22:27.400 camps waiting to be reclaimed by that same unforgiving 00:22:27.400 --> 00:22:31.299 geography in another hundred years. Man, from 00:22:31.299 --> 00:22:33.619 an ancient stronghold to ghost towns returning 00:22:33.619 --> 00:22:36.519 to the earth, a very sobering reminder of who 00:22:36.519 --> 00:22:38.940 actually has the final say. Thank you for joining 00:22:38.940 --> 00:22:41.000 us on this deep dive. We will see you next time.