On July 3, 1890, President Benjamin Harrison signed the statehood bill officially admitting Idaho into the Union as the 43rd state. The victory cemented the rugged, mountainous territory’s transition into a permanent, self-governing piece of the expanding American republic.
The hidden drama behind Idaho’s statehood lies in how close it came to never existing at all. Years prior, Congress heavily debated splitting the territory in half and absorbing it into neighboring Washington and Nevada. The measure to dissolve Idaho actually passed both houses of Congress, but it was saved at the absolute eleventh hour when President Grover Cleveland decided to let the bill die on his desk without a signature, narrowly preserving the borders of the Gem State we know today.
Photo: Birds-eye view of Boise, Idaho from 1000 ft. elev. c. 1910 via Wikimedia Commons, public domain
