The newly organized Idaho Territory originally covers…
March 1863 CE
It is wholly spanned east-to-west by the bustling Oregon Trail and partly by the other emigrant trails, the California Trail and Mormon Trail, which since hitting ts stride in 1847, has been conveying settler wagon trains to the west, and incidentally, across the continental divide into the Snake River Basin, a key gateway into the Idaho and Oregon Country interiors.
The first territorial capital is at Lewiston.
Boise will be made the territorial capital from 1866 by a one-vote margin of the Territorial Supreme Court.
The upheaval caused by the Civil War and Reconstruction will be a distant concern to those in the comparatively stable Idaho Territory, a situation that will in turn encourage settlement.
In 1864, the Montana Territory will be organized from the northeastern section of the territory east of the Bitterroot Range.
Most of the southeastern area of the territory will be made part of the Dakota Territory.