Idaho Tourism and Travel Guides. Boise, Sun Valley

Idaho Tourism and Travel Guides. Boise, Sun Valley, Idaho Falls and More top Idaho Destinations.

IDAHO , located in between Washington, Oregon and Montana, was the last of the states to be penetrated by whites, and rivals Alaska in the sheer scale of its barely explored wilderness areas. Though much of its scenery amply deserves national park status, its citizens have long been suspicious of encroachment by federal government and tourism alike, and only now is its potential for adventurous travel being appreciated.

With a marked absence of urban centers (the pleasant state capital Boise, in the South, being the only real exception), Idaho is very much a destination for the outdoors enthusiast. Natural wonders in its five-hundred-mile stretch include Hell's Canyon , America's deepest river gorge, the dramatic Sawtooth National Recreation Area and the black, barren Craters of the Moon . Beyond these, hikers and backpackers have the choice of no fewer than 81 mountain ranges, interspersed with virgin forest and lava plateau, while the mighty Snake and Salmon rivers offer endless scope for fishing and whitewater rafting .

In 1805, Lewis and Clark declared central Idaho's bewildering labyrinth of razor-edge peaks and wild waterways to be the most difficult leg of their mammoth journey from St Louis to the Pacific. Only their Shoshone guides enabled them to get through; to this day, there is no east-west road across the heart of the state. Reports of game animals tripping over each other in their profusion attracted the usual legions of itinerant trappers, but the Gold Rush of the 1860s and white pressure for land hastened the violent end of traditional life: four hundred Shoshone men, women and children were killed along the Bear River in 1863, the Nez Percé were driven out, and by the end of the 1870s the "Indian problem" had been eradicated. The name "Idaho," incidentally, was invented by a mining lobbyist, who felt it sounded Indian; it was originally proposed for what is now Colorado.

The central wilderness still divides the state into two distinct halves. The heavily forested north , interspersed with glacial lakes now fronted by resorts like Sandpoint and Coeur d'Alene , has always had strong trading links with Spokane in Washington; in the south , irrigation programs begun in the 1880s - partly instigated by Mormons - have transformed the scrubland to either side of the Snake River into the fertile fields responsible for the state's license-plate tag of "Famous Potatoes." Idaho's isolation, and small (1 million) population, have kept it largely out of the mainstream of recent US history; indeed, its remoteness has attracted assorted unwelcome guests - neo-Nazi survivalists awaiting the Second Coming and or nuclear holocaust.

Boise Idaho
Anywhere in the US, the verdant community of BOISE (pronounced Boy-zee ) would come across as a bustling and likeable small city; located in arid southwestern Idaho, it's all the more appealing. The town straddles I-84, just 350 miles from Salt Lake City to the southeast and a trifling 490 miles from Seattle in the northwest.

The town grew up under the protective wing of Fort Boise, established in 1862 for the benefit of pioneers using the Oregon Trail. After adapting (or misspelling) the name originally given to the area by French trappers - les bois , the woods - the earliest residents boosted the town's appearance by planting hundreds more trees.

Boise Idaho - The Town
To explore Boise's compact, friendly downtown , start at the central State Capitol at Jefferson Street and Capitol Boulevard. This squat replica of the national capitol exhibits gemstones such as the star garnet, found only in Indo-China and Idaho. Old Boise Historic District , nearby, is an elegant area of brick houses, shops and restaurants that has undergone major restoration. The unusual Idaho Basque Museum and Cultural Center at 607-611 Grove St (Tue-Fri 10am-4pm, Sat 11am-3pm; $1),) is located in a former boarding house that was for many years home to Basque immigrants fresh from the western Pyrenees, who came to central Idaho, with its equally mountainous terrain, to employ their shepherding skills. The museum traces the Basque cultural heritage and hosts regular traditional dance nights.

It's impossible not to be impressed by the contrast between the urban greenery and the humpy desert hills all around. The city is rightly proud of the Greenbelt , some nineteen miles of paths that crisscross the tranquil Boise River to link nine separate parks. In Julia Davis Park , the Idaho Historical Museum (Mon-Sat 9am-5pm, Sun 1-5pm; donation) chronicles Native American and Basque history, as well as the experience of the Chinese miners of the 1870s and 1880s, who picked over mines long since abandoned by whites. The state legislature, controlled by unreconstructed Confederates who had fled the South after the Civil War, did nothing to stamp out racial violence, and forced the Chinese to pay $4 a month, a considerable amount at the time, just to live in the Territory.

The Old Idaho Penitentiary nestles beneath desert hills at 2445 Old Penitentiary Rd, off Warm Springs Avenue (summer daily 10am-6pm; rest of year daily noon-5pm; $4). This imposing sandstone-walled citadel feels like a desolate outpost, despite being just a mile from downtown. Constructed in 1870 to hold robbers, rustlers and other desperadoes, it remained open until 1974. Self-guided tours take you through the cramped solitary confinement unit, and the gallows room where the last hanging in Idaho was carried out in 1957. Restoration work has sensibly avoided trying to make this brutal prison look more palatable. A small museum displays confiscated weapons and mugshots of former inmates, including one Harry Orchard, who blew up the state governor in 1905 and served out his sentence here, dying in 1954 at the age of 88. Oddly adjacent to the penitentiary, the Idaho Botanical Gardens (mid-April to mid-Oct Mon-Fri 10am-3pm, Sat & Sun 10am-5pm) has nine themed gardens.
Sun Valley Idaho
Although these days Sun Valley is the common label for the entire Wood River Valley area - in the center of southern Idaho, 150 miles west of Idaho Falls and east of Boise - technically it is just the name of a ski resort . This was the 1930s brainchild of Union Pacific Railroad chairman Averell Harriman, who, on discovering his railroad was obliged to maintain a passenger service, decided an alpine ski center would be an ideal stimulus to tourism. His scout, Austrian ski champion Count Schaffgotsch, set out to find dry powder snow on open treeless slopes, sheltered by higher mountains and not at too strenuous an elevation. Having turned down Aspen for being too high, he decided Dollar and Bald mountains fitted the bill, here in the relatively gentle foothills of the Sawtooths near the old sheep-ranching village of KETCHUM . The Sun Valley name was chosen because the snow remained even in the brightest winter sun; early brochures showed skiers stripped to the waist. The world's first chairlift was built here in 1936, and the resort was an instant success.

Sun Valley's season runs from late November through to April; as well as downhill skiing (daily lift pass $63 at Bald Mt, $25 at Dollar Mt), you can also set off cross-country. Ketchum itself is a lively little town with plenty of accommodation, and an oasis of nightlife in this otherwise thinly populated zone. Up to a point, it resembles the Colorado ski towns, though summer trade is not quite as busy. Among summer outdoor activities are cycling along thirty miles of excellent trails - including the former railroad tracks, long since paved over - mountain biking on the superb lift-accessed trails on Bald Mountain and rafting on the rivers to the north. The Sports Complex (tel 208/622-2387) on Sun Valley Road, south of Dollar Road, offers a Nordic ski center, tennis, ice skating, winter sleigh rides and guided horseback rides.

Ernest Hemingway completed For Whom the Bell Tolls as a celebrity guest in the resort in 1939, and lived in Ketchum for the last two years of his life, before his suicide; his very plain grave can be found in the town cemetery.
Idaho Falls
Of the two largest towns in southeast Idaho, IDAHO FALLS makes a better overnight stop than down-at-heel Pocatello, being approximately 100 miles from Craters of the Moon to the west and Yellowstone and Grand Teton to the northeast. The first sign you see of this likeable but quiet community, as you approach along I-15, sixty miles north of Pocatello, is its seven-tier wedding-cake Mormon temple, rising from the flat Snake River Valley. The falls for which the town was named are now entirely tamed, with a long, low concrete dam running diagonally across the river very near downtown - but they form a pleasant focus for the greenbelt of parkland that lines both banks of this agricultural town.

Much of the country en route to Yellowstone is every bit as spectacular as in the national parks, and far less crowded; the magnificent Mesa Falls , for example, are a worthwhile brief detour along Hwy-47, roughly forty miles short of West Yellowstone.

Idaho Tourism and Lodging Information
Idaho Tourism