Julie Fanselow - Idaho Off the Beaten Path®: Discover Your Fun

Off the Beaten Path

Praise for previous editions of Idaho Off the Beaten Path

Rushing around Idaho is inherently pointless... you can
miss the spirit and the majesty in an unplanned moment,
the unexpected person, the odd place, off the beaten path.

USA Today

[This book] makes traveling across the state exciting,
whether youre taking the kids up to college at Moscow
or heading over to Idaho Falls to visit Grandma.

Idaho Statesman

Off the Beaten Path Series

ninth edition

Off the Beaten Path

DISCOVER YOUR FUN

JULIE FANSELOW

Guilford, Connecticut

For Natalie: born to travel, rooted in Idaho

An imprint of Rowman & Littlefield

Off the Beaten Path is a registered trademark of Rowman & Littlefield

Distributed by NATIONAL BOOK NETWORK

800-462-6420

Copyright 2017 Julie Fanselow

Maps: Equator Graphics Rowman & Littlefield

All rights reserved . No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information is available.

ISSN 1535-4431

ISBN 978-1-4930-2785-9 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-4930-2786-6 (ebook)

The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencesPermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

All the information in this guidebook is subject to change. We recommend that you call ahead to obtain current information before traveling.

About the Author

Julie Fanselow lived in Idaho for more than twenty years and still returns regularly to see whats new. Her other books include Traveling the Lewis and Clark Trail and Traveling the Oregon Trail (Globe Pequot), and she contributes to many national and regional magazines.

Acknowledgments

Many Idahoans too numerous to name recommended special spots throughout the Gem State for this book. My thanks to all. Id also like to acknowledge the staff of the Idaho Department of Commerce and everyone at the local chambers of commerce and visitors bureaus who keep me up-to-date on whats happening around Idaho. Thanks, too, to the people at Globe Pequot/Rowman & Littlefield and the editors at Journey, Sunset, Hemispheres, Where to Retire, and Via magazines , for whom Ive written about Idaho.

Special thanks to Bruce Whiting and Natalie Fanselow Whiting. Natalie was a baby when I first researched this book. She had visited nearly every Idaho county by her first birthday, and she is finishing college in Boise as this latest edition is published. This book remains dedicated to her, as well as to the memory of my father, Byron Fanselow, who gave me a love for travel and accompanied me to many of the places in this book.

Introduction

When I first moved to Idaho, I had about two weeks before I was scheduled to start my job at the newspaper in Twin Falls. What better way to spend the time, I figured, than on a quick orientation trip around my new home state? Two weeks would be plenty of time to take a drive through Idahos mountainous midsection, followed by a beeline for the Canadian border, a detour through Montana to Salmon, and a swing through Eastern Idaho.

Or so I thought. A week or so later, Id meandered across maybe a quarter of my intended route. As someone who had grown up on the fringes of Pennsylvania suburbia and come of age in rural Ohio, I knew more than a little bit about back roads and small towns. But I knew next to nothing about a landscape that would force me, by virtue of geography and scenery, to really slow down and savor the journey, not to mention a piece of huckleberry pie here and a buffalo burger there. Years later, I still havent seen nor experienced all Idaho has to offerespecially not now, when international cuisines are joining mountain fare on the states menus and an increasingly urban Idaho has as many cultural delights as recreational destinations. I expect it will take a lifetime, and thats fine.

In a sense, all of Idaho could be considered off the beaten path. Its true that herelike elsewhereinterstates now cross the state from east to west. But Highway 12, the only route across North Central Idaho, didnt link Lewiston to Missoula, Montana, until 1961. The White Bird Grade on the states only major northsouth road, US 95, wasnt completed until 1975. When the highway is closed by bad weather or rock slides, travelers must make a five-hour detour through Oregon and Washington. And until the early 1990s, it was nonstop cross-country from Boston to Seattle on Interstate 90, except for one stoplight in the town of Wallace, Idaho.

Idaho was the last of the continental United States to be settled by whites pushing westward (although Native Americans were here 10,000 to 15,000 years ago). When pioneers pressed west on the Oregon and California Trails, most kept right on going through what would become Idaho. When British fur traders staked their claims in the Northwest, they did so hundreds of miles west near the mouth of the great Columbia River. Idahos first permanent town, Franklin, wasnt settled until 1860, and many communities didnt exist at all until early in the twentieth century.

Despite its slow start, Idaho is one of the fastest-growing states in the nation, especially in the Boise metropolitan area, home to about four out of every ten Idahoans, and near Coeur dAlene. But no matter where you are in Idaho, you dont have to travel far to escape: Owyhee County, south of Boise, and the Central Idaho Rockies, northeast of the capital city, remain so sparsely settled they could qualify as frontier. All across Idaho, residents and visitors have plenty of opportunities to get happily lost for a day, a weekend, or longer, on a seldom-traveled forest road, in an abandoned mountaintop fire tower, in a country antiques store, or in a tucked-away cafe. I also believe you can venture off the beaten track in cities and towns, so this book also includes lesser-known and offbeat places in Idahos larger communities.

A few notes on how to use this book: There are seven chapters, each covering one of the tourism regions designated by the Idaho Travel Council. Each chapter leads off with a general overview of the region. With roads few and far between in many areas of Idaho, it is impossible to avoid retracing a route once in a while, but Ive tried to keep backtracking to a minimum. Although each chapter leads off with a general map of the region and its attractions, you will want to use a more detailed map in planning your travels. You can get a free highway map by calling (800) VISIT-ID (847-4843). Maps are also available at visitor centers, via visitidaho.org, or by writing the Idaho Travel Council at 700 West State St., Boise 83720. For more detailed maps, the Idaho Atlas & Gazetteer published by DeLorme Mapping (delorme.com) or the Idaho Road & Recreation Atlas (benchmarkmaps.com) are both good choices, as are the maps published by the various units of the US Forest Service in Idaho.