WASFAA Conference 2002 Preview
by Rod Dunn, University of Idaho

"... If you pushed me up against a wall as to my favorite spot, I would probably answer the Rocky Mountains of the West, around Idaho. There's something about coming around a corner and seeing a meadow full of wildflowers."
-Charles Kurault, CBS journalist and host of "Sunday Morning."

"Best of all he loved the fall...
the leaves yellow on the cottonwoods,
leaves floating on the trout streams and
above the hills the high blue windless sky...
Now he will be a part of them forever."
-Poem by Ernest Hemingway (1939) inscribed on a Hemingway memorial overlooking Trail Creek in Sun Valley.

"You're livin' in your own Private Idaho.
You're out of control, the rivers that roll,
you fell into the water and down to Idaho.
Get out of that state,
get out of that state you're in.
You better beware."
-Private Idaho by the B-52's

• "There are about a million people living in Idaho... there were a million people living in my neighborhood where I grew up!"
• "Nobody asks for I.D. when you cash a check and when stores have sidewalk sales they just leave all the stuff out on the sidewalk overnight when they close."
• "You leave your keys in the car and the next morning it's still there."
• "You can fish, golf, and go skiing all in the same day if you try hard enough."
• "Within 1-2 hours from where I live there are 120 fresh water lakes and 1500 miles of rivers and streams."

"...I like Idaho. The crystal streams. The rushing rivers. The forests. The mountains. The lakes as blue as paint. The splash of mountain ash or maple. The foam of the syringa, the state's official flower. The awesome wastes. The fruitful fields. The warm friendliness of crossroads and town. The high sky over all."
-A.B. Guthrie, author of The Big Sky.

"Is there contentment beyond the confines of urban living? You bet. In Idaho, God has carved out a special preview of the hereafter for those who prefer life in a natural state."
-Andrew Harper, editor of The Hideaway Report.

• ERNEST HEMINGWAY arrived in Sun Valley in 1939 to work on his novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls. Idaho offered wide-open spaces for Hemingway to indulge in his passions for hunting, skiing, fishing, and other outdoor activities. Hemingway is buried in Ketchum, where he died on July 2, 1961.
• THE POET EZRA POUND was born in Hailey, Idaho, in 1885, just 11 miles south of where Ernest Hemingway is buried. Pound left Idaho at 18 months to grow up and become one of the controversial movers and shakers of modern literature.
• SKI CHAMPS Gretchen Fraser, an Olympic gold medallist in 1948, and Christin Cooper, a silver medallist in 1984, came from Idaho. Olympic champion (1984) Bill Johnson learned to ski at Bogus Basin just outside of Boise. Picabo Street yet another Olympic silver medallist in 1994 and World Champion Downhill Racer in 1995 and 1996, originally hails from Ketchum.
• MORE OLYMPIADS Decathalete Dan O' Brien, 1996 Olympic gold medal winner and World Record Holder, lives and trains in Moscow, Idaho.
• TELEVISION INVENTOR PHILO T. FARNSWORTH (1906-1971) of Rigby produced the first all-electronic television image when he was still just 20 years old. Inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1984, Farnsworth's first patent, entitled "Television System," was filed January 7, 1927. He also held patents for the cathode ray tube and more than 300 other U.S. and foreign inventions.
• GUESS WHO? What would you do if you were born Julia Jean Mildred Frances Turner in Wallace, Idaho? Change your name to Lana Turner and become a movie star! Actress Marjorie Reynolds also was born in Buhl, Idaho.
• TARZAN! One of the most famous part-time residents of Pocatello, Idaho, was...no, not Cheetah...Edgar Rice Burroughs, creator of the Tarzan stories. It is rumored that he wrote the first drafts of "Tarzan of the Apes" while running a stationery store in Pocatello.
• TWO BASEBALL HALL OF FAMERS came from Idaho. Walter "Big Train" Johnson of Weiser was considered one of the greatest pitchers of all time. And, Harmon Killebrew of Payette was one of baseball's power hitters.
• THE FOSBURY FLOP, a high jumping technique, was invented by Ketchum resident Dick Fosbury.
• GUTZON BORGLUM (1871-1941), the sculptor who carved Mt. Rushmore National Memorial in South Dakota, was born near Bear Lake, Idaho. Borglum spent 14 years (1927-1941) on the massive sculpture, removing more than 400,000 tons of granite from the 6,200-foot cliff.
• TEACHER OF THE NEXT FRONTIER Barbara Morgan, an elementary school teacher from McCall, will be the teachernaut to go into space when the Teacher in Space program resumes. She and David Marquart, anoth-er Idaho teacher, were the first and second runners-up in the Teacher in Space Program.
• FOOTBALLS AND COWBOYS: Jerry Kramer is Idaho's most famous professional football star, while football and horses were Dee Pickett's passion. Though Pickett made a name for himself locally as quarterback of the Boise State Broncos, he is best known as a premier rodeo cowboy. In 1984 he rode and roped to the top of his profession, earning the Pro Rodeo Championship All-Around Cowboy title.
• SACAJAWEA, guide, interpreter, cook, horse trader, and general all around lifesaver of the 1805 Lewis and Clark Expedition, is one of the great heroines of the American West. Due largely to her skills as a horse trader, the Idaho Federation of Business and Professional Women recently named her Idaho's first-ever businesswoman.

• 63% of Idaho is public land managed by the federal government. The Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness is the largest wilderness area in the 48 contiguous states- 2.3 million acres of rugged, unspoiled backcountry.
• The world's first alpine skiing chairlift was (and still is) located in Sun Valley. Built by Union Pacific Railroad engineers, it was designed after a banana-boat loading device. The 1936 fee: 25 cents per ride.
• The world's first nuclear power plant is located at the Idaho National Environmental and Engineering Laboratory (INEEL), near Arco, Idaho. The Atomic Energy Commission offered the town of Arco electricity generated by atomic energy in 1953.
• Five of history's pioneer trails, including the Oregon Trail and the California Trail, cross Southern Idaho. Wagon ruts are still visible all along the rugged terrain.
• The Scott Ski Pole, an invention that helped revolutionize skiing, was invented by Ketchum's Edward Scott in 1958.
• Nearly 85% of all the commercial trout sold in the United States is produced in the Hagerman Valley near Twin Falls.
• Butch Cassidy, a.k.a. - George Leroy Parker, robbed the bank in Montpelier, Idaho, on August 13, 1896. He got away with $7,165, allegedly to hire a lawyer for his partner Matt Warner, who was awaiting trial for murder in Ogden, Utah.
• Shoshone Falls (212 feet), near Twin Falls, Idaho, drops 52 feet further than Niagara Falls.
• The Snake River Birds of Prey Natural Area near Kuna, is the location of the largest concentration of nesting raptors in North America. Thousands of visitors travel to the site each year, from March through August, to observe the birds.
• Wilson Butte Cave, near Twin Falls, was excavated in 1959 and found to contain bones of bison and antelope, as well as some arrowheads and other artifacts that were carbon-dated to be 14,500 years old. This makes them "among the oldest definitely dated artifacts in the New World."
• Craters of the Moon National Monument in southeast Idaho contains nearly 40 separate lava flows, some formed as recently as 250 years ago. The otherworldly area was used as a training ground for early astronauts. The lavish June display of wild flowers adds to the surreal quality of the landscape.
• Between 1863 (when Abraham Lincoln signed the bill making Idaho a Territory) and statehood (27 years later), the Idaho Territory had 16 governors, four of whom never set foot in Idaho.
• Appropriately named the "Gem State," Idaho produces 72 types of precious and semi-precious stones, some of which can be found nowhere else in the world.
• The Silver Valley in northern Idaho has produced more than $4 billion in precious metals since 1884, making the area one of the top 10 mining districts in the world.
• One of the largest diamonds ever found in the United States, nearly 20 carats, was discovered near McCall, Idaho.
• In 1953, the engineering prototype of the first nuclear submarine, the Nautilus, was built and tested in the Idaho desert on the Snake River Plain near Arco.
• Idaho's Salmon River, known as the "River of No Return" because of its difficult passage, is the nation's longest free-flowing river that heads and flows within a single state.
• After the great Wallace fire of 1910, the Pulaski, a mattock- axe tool used in fire fighting, was invented in Idaho.
• The Statehouse in Boise and dozens of other buildings in the city are geothermally heated from underground hot springs. In fact, Idaho is well sprinkled with public and private Hot Springs.

"I never knew a man who felt self-important in the morning after spending the night in the open on an Idaho mountainside under a star studded summer sky. Save some time in your lives for the outdoors, where you can be witness to the wonders of God."
-Frank Church, former U.S. Senator from Idaho.