The Senator Who Wanted to Move Idaho Thirty Miles West
A former Idaho senator says the Washington–Idaho line is in the wrong place—and that Spokane, Colfax and Palouse should be Idaho towns.
SPOKANE, Jan. 15.—Ex-Senator McConnell, of Idaho, is in Spokane and has sprung a sensation. He claims to have discovered that the boundary line between Washington and Idaho is thirty miles too far east and proposes to have it moved. He is going at once to Washington, D. C., to make what arrangements he can for a resurvey. He has consulted on the subject with Fremont Tenatt, ex-land agent of the Union Pacific, who agrees with him, so he says. Should the proposed change in the boundary line be made the towns of Spokane, Colfax, Palouse and a large portion of Spokane and Whitman counties will be in Idaho.
“He claims to have discovered that the boundary line between Washington and Idaho is thirty miles too far east and proposes to have it moved.”
The proposal went nowhere, but it captures how arbitrary state lines can feel when they cut against a region’s economic gravity. Today the Washington–Idaho border still shapes taxes, representation and identity, even if Spokane remains firmly on the Washington side.
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