The Forgotten Map: When North Idaho Was Seattle’s Neighbor
For years, North Idaho residents pushed to break away from their own state and join Washington Territory, citing geographic reality and political isolation.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The bill providing for the annexation of North Idaho to Washington Territory has passed both houses of Congress, and, except in the very improbable event of its veto by the President, will at once become a law. Thus comes to a successful conclusion an agitation which has been carried on with various degrees of intensity ever since the region affected became sufficiently populous for the people to feel their isolated position. How North Idaho ever happened to be cut off from Washington Territory, it would be difficult to say. It surely was not because of the physical features of the country, for the boundary which is soon to disappear from the map is merely an imaginary line drawn, for the most part, through a level plain. The interests of the people of North Idaho and those of the people of Eastern Washington are in every way identical and their political aspiration has always been a hardship, especially to the former. North Idaho is a region separated from the main body of Idaho and from Montana by mountains and rivers. It is easily accessible only from Washington Territory and is naturally as much a part of this Territory as any of its outlying counties.
“The boundary which is soon to disappear from the map is merely an imaginary line drawn, for the most part, through a level plain.”
Today, state borders are seen as permanent, but this story captures the fluid, contested nature of Pacific Northwest boundaries in the 1880s. The struggle for regional integration and accessibility remains a central theme in how we view the economic and political cohesion of the PNW.
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