Idaho

Overview

Idaho, the Gem State, is the 43rd state of the United States, admitted to the Union on July 3, 1890, with Boise as its capital and largest city and a 2025 estimated population of 2,029,733 (EBSCO). It is a landlocked state in the Pacific Northwest and Mountain West, bordered by the Canadian province of British Columbia to the north, Washington and Oregon to the west, Nevada and Utah to the south, and Montana and Wyoming to the east (EBSCO). More than 60 percent of its land is owned by the federal government, much of it wilderness, and its nickname comes from the variety of gemstones found within its borders — garnet among them (EBSCO).

The state’s name itself is a mystery it wears openly: its origin is uncertain and it is probably an invented word, originally suggested for the Colorado Territory, though it is often said to derive from an Arapaho phrase meaning “gem of the mountains” (EBSCO). Mountains divide the state into two distinct regions with their own identities: the rugged, forested north — the Panhandle — linked economically to Washington State, and the plains of the south, home to the Snake River Valley’s farmland and most of the population, linked to Wyoming and Utah (EBSCO). Boise has been the capital since statehood, after serving as territorial capital from 1865 to 1890; the original territorial capital was Lewiston (EBSCO).

Measure	Figure	Source
Admitted to the Union	July 3, 1890 (43rd state)	EBSCO
Capital and largest city	Boise (2025 est. 238,429)	EBSCO
2025 estimated population	2,029,733 (ranked 37th)	EBSCO
Area	83,569 sq mi (216,444 sq km, ranked 14th)	EBSCO
Counties	44	EBSCO
Highest point	Borah Peak, 12,662 ft	EBSCO
Lowest point	Snake River, 710 ft	EBSCO
Federal land share	Over 60%	EBSCO

From gold rush territory to the Gem State

Idaho’s recorded history as an American place begins with exploration: Lewis and Clark crossed Lemhi Pass into present-day Idaho in 1805, among the first White men to see the region, on the expedition President Jefferson authorized in 1804–06 (EBSCO). Pioneer wagons on the Oregon Trail crossed Idaho for the first time in 1843, and gold discovered at Orofino Creek in 1860 set off a rush that brought the settlers who demanded their own government; Congress created Idaho Territory in 1863 with Lewiston as its capital, and moved the capital to Boise in 1864 as gold discoveries in the Boise Basin shifted the population south (EBSCO). The territory’s Indigenous history runs deeper and darker: five federally recognized tribes — the Coeur d’Alene, the Nez Percé, the Kootenai, the Shoshone-Bannock, and the Shoshone-Paiute — retain homelands in the region, and in 1877 the Nez Percé under Chief Joseph fought the US Army and were defeated and forced onto an Oklahoma reservation, the last major American Indian war in Idaho (EBSCO). Statehood followed on July 3, 1890, and the state passed two million people for the first time in 2024, driven by migration from western states and economic growth (EBSCO). The darker chapters continued into the twentieth century: the Minidoka Relocation Center opened in Jerome County in 1942 and eventually held 9,397 Japanese Americans interned during World War II (EBSCO).

Potatoes, wilderness, and water power

Idaho’s economy still runs on the slogan “Famous Potatoes”: the state produces some 14 billion pounds of potatoes each year, about a third of the national harvest, and is the second-largest grower of sugar beets and hops in the country (EBSCO). But agriculture is only one leg. The state’s major industries today are finance, insurance, real estate, and professional and business services, with electronics, transportation equipment, and chemicals among its important manufactures, and mining — gold, silver, antimony, lead, phosphates, molybdenum, and zinc — still matters (EBSCO). Tourism has grown into a $5.8 billion industry (2023), supporting more than 55,000 jobs, built on unspoiled wilderness, hunting, fishing, and camping (EBSCO). The geography behind that tourism is extreme: Hells Canyon, at 7,900 feet, is the deepest river gorge in North America; Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve covers 618 square miles of basaltic lava fields; and the Snake River, which winds through the southern plains, powers an energy system in which hydroelectricity typically produces more than half of net electricity generation and renewables supplied about 69 percent in 2024 (EBSCO). The state has no oil refineries or proven crude reserves, and its only seaport is the Port of Lewiston, on the Snake and Clearwater Rivers, connecting to the Pacific through the Columbia–Snake system (EBSCO).

The 2026 Supreme Court chapter: Little v. Hecox

Most state profiles stop at potatoes and wilderness. Idaho’s most consequential recent chapter is that it moved first. In March 2020 Governor Brad Little signed the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, and Idaho became the first state to pass such a law protecting equal opportunities for women and girls (Alliance Defending Freedom). Weeks later the ACLU challenged the law, and Alliance Defending Freedom intervened on behalf of Madison Kenyon and Mary Kate Marshall, former collegiate athletes who ran track and cross-country for Idaho State University and who, in 2019, had run against and lost to a male athlete and been bumped down a placement level (Alliance Defending Freedom). A federal court allowed the two athletes to intervene in August 2020, while also halting enforcement of the Act while the lawsuit continued (Alliance Defending Freedom). After years of Ninth Circuit proceedings, the state, alongside ADF attorneys, asked the US Supreme Court to hear the case in July 2024 (Alliance Defending Freedom). Attorney General Raúl Labrador, who took office in January 2023 and made defending the law a top priority, appealed the case to the Supreme Court; the Court agreed to hear it in July 2025 alongside the similar West Virginia case, with Solicitor General Alan Hurst arguing for the state (Idaho Attorney General). ADF served as co-counsel alongside Labrador, and the legislation itself had been sponsored by State Representative Barbara Ehardt of Idaho Falls (Alliance Defending Freedom; Idaho Attorney General).

On June 30, 2026, the Court upheld Idaho’s and West Virginia’s women’s-sports laws, ruling 9-0 on Title IX and 6-3 on the Equal Protection Clause (Alliance Defending Freedom). Title IX’s term “sex” means biological sex, not gender identity, based on its ordinary meaning at enactment, and the Court declined to extend its 2020 Bostock employment ruling to Title IX’s sports context (LexBlog). On Equal Protection, the majority applied intermediate scrutiny and held that safety and competitive fairness are important government interests substantially served by limiting women’s sports to biological females (LexBlog). Labrador’s verdict on the outcome was blunt: “Idaho led the nation by becoming the first state to protect women’s sports, and I’ve never wavered in defending that law” (Alliance Defending Freedom). As with West Virginia, the holding is permissive — states may restrict, but the Court did not decide whether states or schools may permit transgender participation, leaving that question open (LexBlog).

What this profile does not claim

This profile does not claim a precise 2020 census population or a single settled total area for Idaho: the small variances across references are flagged above, and EBSCO’s figures are used. It does not claim that Idaho has seven national parks, or any national park at all — only the monument, historic sites, and trails EBSCO itself lists. It does not claim a signing day within March 2020 for the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, details of the Act’s verification procedure, or that the June 2026 ruling requires any state to exclude transgender athletes. It does not claim a current governor or legislature composition beyond the officials named in the case narrative.