Aerial.America.S05E02.Idaho
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00:00There's no wilder place in the lower 48 than this, with its spine of saw-tooth peaks, river
00:09of no return, and strange volcanic landscapes as desolate as the moon.
00:15It's taken some pretty hardy pioneers to transform Idaho into America's 43rd state.
00:22From the missionary who planted Idaho's very first potato, to the scientists who powered
00:29the first atomic city in the world, to an infamous daredevil who attempted to rocket
00:34across a truly hellish canyon.
00:38But it's also in Idaho that the pursuit of riches deep below has left lasting scars,
00:44and led to an act of terrorism that shocked the nation.
00:49And it was here that a great Native American tribe won in battle, but lost their sacred
00:55land forever.
00:58In this rugged western state, a railroad tycoon built the world's first ski lift to help turn
01:04a sun-filled valley into a playground for the rich and famous, near the high, jagged
01:10peaks of one of the wildest pieces of land in the nation, accessible only by foot or
01:16bush plane.
01:18Aerial Idaho soars across one of America's great river canyons, and a torrent known as
01:24the Niagara of the West.
01:26All this in Idaho.
01:54Soar over Idaho, and it's possible to be convinced that this land has never been touched
02:12by humans.
02:15There are seemingly endless forests, great ancient spines of stone, and remote rivers
02:26that are still carving their way through rugged canyons, just as they have been for millennia.
02:33But take a closer look at the floors of its valleys, and you'll soon discover that they
02:39are littered with the remains of the great boom that's responsible for transforming this
02:43wild land into America's 43rd state.
02:48There are still the boom's rusting machines, the crumbling structures of old mines, and
02:55giant dredges so heavy they were simply abandoned when the riches they processed ran out.
03:04It all started with a bunch of what seemed like tall tales back in 1860.
03:12That's when rumors of gold in a place called the Boise Basin started spreading like wildfire.
03:19Soon, scrappy prospectors began fanning out across the region, and coming into conflict
03:25with the Native American tribes that originally called Idaho home.
03:30In 1862, two of these prospectors, George Grimes and Moses Splawn, decided to join forces.
03:39In August that year, they set out into the hills with a small party of eight men.
03:45After a few days, they began sifting the sand and earth around this remote riverbed, a process
03:51known as placer mining, hoping that the rumors were actually true.
03:57Before they knew it, shiny flakes of gold started pouring through their fingers.
04:04But there were heavy risks for these miners who were searching for treasure on land that wasn't theirs.
04:11Grimes barely got a chance to enjoy his riches.
04:15Just a few days after the party's gold strike, he was shot dead.
04:20His partner, Moses Splawn, later wrote that he and Grimes had been attacked by a group
04:24of Native Americans who were trying to protect their lands.
04:28Grimes was buried close to where he fell, here in the basin, near this bubbling waterway.
04:34That's been known as Grimes Creek ever since.
04:38It didn't take long for word of the expedition's discovery to get out, and within roughly one
04:43year of Grimes' death, an estimated 16,000 miners had arrived in the Boise Basin.
04:50A small mining camp called Bannock was transformed almost overnight into a boom town, and was
04:56soon renamed Idaho City.
05:01The Boise Basin gold strike became one of the most important gold finds in American history.
05:07Within two decades, miners here unearthed nearly $55 million worth of gold.
05:14And Idaho was about to become its own territory.
05:18Before gold was discovered in the Boise Basin, Idaho had been part of the Oregon and Washington
05:23territories that covered much of the Northwest.
05:27Then, in 1859, Oregon was granted statehood, and the Washington Territory was enlarged
05:34to cover all of present-day Idaho.
05:37Finally, in 1863, the Idaho Territory was borne, and included land that would later
05:44become the states of Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho.
05:51But the new territory got off to a rocky start.
05:54At the time, most of Idaho's population were miners who lived in the south, in and
05:59around the Boise Basin.
06:01But even so, Idaho's first appointed governor, William H. Wallace, decided that the northern
06:06city of Lewiston should be the site of the new territorial capital.
06:12The first capital building for the new territory wasn't very impressive.
06:16This tiny one-room structure is an exact replica of the original.
06:21It was here that Idaho legislators, in just their second session, voted to move the capital
06:26to a new town in the south called Boise, close to Idaho City and other mining boom towns
06:32nearby.
06:35The bill was signed by a new governor named Caleb Lyon, who championed Boise as the new
06:40capital.
06:42But many in the north protested, and succeeded in getting a local Lewiston judge to block
06:47the move to Boise.
06:50A few months later, the territory's second-in-charge, Secretary Clinton DeWitt Smith, took matters
06:55into his own hands.
06:58On March 29, 1865, he and a group of soldiers broke into the capital, stuffed the territorial
07:04seal and other documents into saddlebags, and fled, with a U.S. marshal hot on their
07:10heels.
07:13They traveled south, arriving here in this broad valley, where they declared that the
07:18town that lay at its center, Boise, was now Idaho's capital city, which it still is today.
07:26But it took nearly 30 years for Idaho to go from territory to state.
07:31It finally did, becoming America's 43rd state on July 3, 1890.
07:38And it took another 30 years for the state to build itself a new capital.
07:45No expense was spared.
07:49Soaring above it, a nearly six-foot-tall copper eagle, now covered in gold, to celebrate the
07:56state's mineral wealth and its allegiance to the Union.
08:00While political tempers occasionally flare inside the capital's walls, nothing compares
08:05to the heat that lies some 3,000 feet below.
08:10The Idaho capitol, and other buildings in the capitol complex, are heated today by geothermal
08:15water, pumped from more than half a mile under the capitol dome.
08:20It's the only statehouse in the country that relies on this form of clean, renewable energy
08:25to keep its legislators warm.
08:30Boise began as a U.S. Army fort during the Gold Rush in 1863, and served as an important
08:37stop on the Oregon Trail.
08:40But today, its fortunes are in high tech, not flakes of gold.
08:46It's home to the headquarters of Micron, one of the largest makers of microchips and flash
08:51memory in the world.
08:54Boise is one of the fastest-growing cities in the nation.
08:57Downtown, construction crews are putting the finishing touches on the city's tallest
09:02building yet, the 323-foot-tall Zions Bank Building at 8th and Main.
09:08Idaho's capital city is home to more than 200,000 people, and on fall Saturdays, 36,000
09:15of them can squeeze into the bleachers at Bronco Stadium at Boise State University.
09:21It's the first football field in the history of the sport to have a playing field that's
09:25not green.
09:27Fans call it Smurf Turf.
09:31Ever since it was installed in 1986, this synthetic blue grass has been controversial.
09:37Opposing teams claim that the Broncos' home uniforms, which are also blue, blend in with
09:42the field, making the team nearly invisible.
09:47There may be some truth to that.
09:50Between 2000 and 2012, Boise State had 78 wins and just four losses at home.
09:59The NCAA had debated forcing the Broncos to wear uniforms that aren't also blue, but no
10:04such ban has been put in place.
10:07At least, not yet.
10:11In 1836, the very first wagon train on the Oregon Trail rolled across these dry Idaho
10:22hills.
10:24They crossed through the homeland of a Native American tribe called the Nez Perce.
10:33At the heart of their land was the Lapwai Valley.
10:38For the Nez Perce, the term Lapwai refers to the sound that the wings of butterflies
10:43make when they fly, which made this the Valley of Butterflies.
10:50Until the 1830s, the tribe pretty much had this quiet valley to themselves, except for
10:56a few European fur traders who passed through on their search for beaver pelts.
11:02But that all changed when the seven heavily laden down wagons rolled through the valley
11:07and ground to a halt so that two passengers could disembark, a Presbyterian minister named
11:13Henry Spalding and his wife, Eliza.
11:18They'd come to start a mission with the goal of winning converts among the Nez Perce by
11:23convincing them to believe in a new god and give up their sinful ways.
11:30This small frontier church, built later in 1876, stands on the site of Spalding's original
11:37mission.
11:40He arrived hoping his legacy would be a spiritual one.
11:45Little did Spalding know that his biggest contribution to the Nez Perce and to Idaho
11:50would be potatoes.
11:55That very first spring, he and a few Nez Perce converts cleared fields and planted peas and
12:00potatoes with seeds Spalding had brought with him.
12:04The first crop was a miserable failure, but the next year Spalding harvested 800 bushels
12:11of potatoes, worth about $388 at the time.
12:16Soon, too, the Nez Perce, who were primarily hunters and gatherers, were farming potatoes
12:22and trading them with the settlers passing by on the Oregon Trail.
12:28It was here in the Lapwai Valley that the Idaho potato was born.
12:35But while Spalding's potatoes were here to stay, Spalding himself wasn't.
12:41In 1847, another minister nearby was murdered by Cayuse Indians, who accused him of spreading
12:47deadly diseases.
12:50Fearing for their lives, Spalding and his wife hopped on another wagon train heading
12:54west and fled, leaving their mission and the Lapwai Valley behind.
12:59They joined what was already a flood of settlers making its way to Oregon's fertile Willamette
13:04Valley.
13:05In the middle of the 19th century, the fastest way for those settlers to get to Oregon was
13:10to cross through Idaho.
13:13It wasn't a journey for the fate of heart.
13:20Many died along the trail from disease, exposure, and even snakebite.
13:28And by the 1860s, conflicts were growing with Native American tribes that were resisting
13:33the intrusion of uninvited travelers across their lands.
13:39In 1862, ten settlers in Idaho were ambushed and killed by Shoshone Indians, here at a
13:45place called Massacre Rocks, which lay on the Oregon Trail.
13:50Hoping to establish a safer route west, a frontier guide named Tim Goodale agreed to
13:56lead more than a thousand settlers over a new but untested path that circled north around
14:02the Shoshone lands.
14:04But they would have to navigate this.
14:10A place known today as the Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve.
14:18About 15,000 years ago, the ground here exploded when a volcanic eruption spewed forth a great
14:25river of black lava.
14:28Over the following 13 centuries, seven more volcanic events rocked this part of Idaho.
14:36Each one covered more and more of the surrounding landscape with an ever-expanding ocean of
14:41lava.
14:45Each flow cooled to create this dark, eerie landscape.
14:51Today, this lava field covers 618 square miles.
14:57And there's other evidence of what happened here.
15:01Spectacular cones, stunning craters, and sky-high buttes.
15:09Based on past events, scientists predict that this now quiet landscape will erupt again,
15:15possibly even within the next 200 years.
15:20Day in and day out, the more than 1,000 settlers in Goodale's wagon train skirted this ocean
15:25of lava.
15:27The harsh desert sun dried out their wheels, while the rough terrain caused some of the wagons to
15:32splinter into pieces, and many were simply abandoned on the trail.
15:40Some of the settlers feared they wouldn't make it, but knew that their only choices were to turn
15:45back and risk Indian attack or forge on.
15:52Finally, at the end of three brutal weeks, the lava suddenly came to an end, giving way to grassy
15:59plains.
16:01And the new route, now named Goodale's Cutoff, was soon a popular detour on the Oregon Trail.
16:08Today, Highway 20 runs near that original route.
16:13Drivers can wind around the craters of the moon, close to the same path that America's early
16:19pioneers did more than 150 years ago.
16:22But there is a place that Highway 20 won't take you in Idaho.
16:25A place so big and so wild, the only way to get there is by bush plane.
16:37In 1932, the popular Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, New York, triggered a winter sports boom
16:43across the U.S.
16:46One of America's richest men decided he wanted to cash in.
16:51To do it, New York railroad tycoon Averill Harriman decided he'd build a ski resort more luxurious
16:57than any other in the world.
17:00The problem was, he had no place to put it.
17:04So, he hired an Austrian count named Felix Schafkosch to scour the American west for just the
17:10right mountain.
17:13Harriman's requirements were that it be remote, but near his rail lines, so skiers would have to
17:19rely on his trains to get there.
17:23During the winter of 1935, Schafkosch traveled across Oregon, California, and Wyoming, before
17:29finally arriving in the Wood River Valley in Idaho, located between the Bald and Dollar Mountains.
17:37What made this valley special was that it reportedly had more than 250 days of sun a year.
17:46Harriman quickly made that fact his pitch, renaming it Sun Valley to lure potential customers to
17:52his new resort.
17:55To get skiers to the top of the mountains, he installed the world's first ski lift, a faster and
18:01more comfortable alternative to the rope tows that were common at the time.
18:06To build it, Harriman and railroad engineers modified a conveyor system used to load bananas onto
18:12ships and strung it up the mountain.
18:15Today, a replica offers a glimpse of what the first ski lift looked like.
18:20When it opened, skiers could ride to the top for just 25 cents.
18:25Today, a season pass costs up to $2,000.
18:32When Harriman's luxurious lodge opened, he didn't leave anything to chance.
18:37He hired ski instructors from the Swiss Alps and ran special trains from Hollywood to catch him
18:43to bring in movie stars.
18:45Gary Cooper, Clark Gable, and Lucille Ball were just some of those who were often spotted on the
18:50grounds of the Sun Valley Lodge.
18:53Harriman even put up some celebrities for free to generate buzz.
18:58One of those was writer Ernest Hemingway.
19:03He first came in 1939 and lived in a second-floor room with his mistress, journalist Martha Gellhorn,
19:09who later became his third wife.
19:14It was here at the Sun Valley Resort that Hemingway completed his famous novel,
19:19For Whom the Bell Tolls.
19:23Hemingway instantly fell in love with Sun Valley.
19:28When he wasn't writing or fishing, he was often spotted at the Sawtooth Club downtown.
19:35It wasn't until 1960 that Hemingway came to Sun Valley to stay,
19:40after having lived around the world, including in Key West and Cuba.
19:45He built his new house like a vault with thick walls made from concrete blocks
19:50to protect his writing and papers from fire.
19:56But by the time Hemingway moved here for good, he was suffering from severe depression.
20:02On July 2, 1961, at the age of 61, he took his own life in the foyer of his Sun Valley house.
20:12Papa Hemingway, as he was fondly called, was buried under towering spruce trees in the Ketchum Cemetery.
20:21A memorial to him nearby reads,
20:24Best of all, he loved the fall.
20:26The leaves yellow on the cottonwoods, leaves floating on the trout streams.
20:31And above the hills, the high blue windless sky.
20:35Now, he will be part of them forever.
20:39Words that Hemingway himself once wrote as an epitaph for a friend.
20:46While Idaho's wild spaces played a big role in Hemingway's life and imagination,
20:51he only wrote one short story about the state,
20:55preferring to keep his love for this sun-filled valley and its silver creek to himself.
21:03But these days, that secret is out.
21:06Sun Valley is packed with the vacation homes of celebrities who jet in from Los Angeles, Seattle, and New York.
21:13One of those covers 18,000 square feet.
21:16It's the home of movie star and former California governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger.
21:22Across the valley, Schwarzenegger was given the ultimate sign of stardom,
21:26a ski run named in his honor, Arnold's Run.
21:33Throughout the days of Avril Harriman, Sun Valley and its surrounding hills have played roles,
21:38big and small, in more than 30 Hollywood movies.
21:42From Marilyn Monroe's How to Marry a Millionaire to Clint Eastwood's Pale Rider.
21:49Eastwood first came here in the 1940s as a child, and he's been coming back ever since.
21:55He filmed the opening titles to Pale Rider in the Sawtooth Mountains, just north of Sun Valley.
22:02These jagged pinnacles stretch like a backbone across central Idaho.
22:09Idaho has more wild and remote public lands than any state outside of Alaska.
22:15And the wildest of them all happens to be the largest single piece of protected land in the lower 48,
22:21a place known as the Frank, short for the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness Area.
22:31Covering 2.3 million acres, the Frank stretches from the Montana border south, right across the heart of Idaho.
22:40Running through it, like giant veins, are a number of tributaries that flow into the Great Salmon River,
22:47which is also known as the River of No Return.
22:53It was named by pioneers who happily rode its rushing currents downstream
22:57but found the water was too fast-flowing for them to paddle back up.
23:02Over millennia, that rushing water carved its way through these jagged peaks,
23:06called the Bighorn Crags, that rise up to 10,000 feet.
23:13The Frank is named for Frank Church, who served Idaho in the U.S. Senate for 24 years before passing away in 1984.
23:22He worked tirelessly to protect Idaho's wild spaces.
23:28By his design, the Frank is not an easy place to get into.
23:32Mechanized and motorized land vehicles aren't allowed, and that even includes mountain bikes.
23:40But rafting is permitted for those willing to brave the rapids of the River of No Return.
23:49To reach the most remote areas of the Frank, the only way in is by foot or bush plane.
23:58Many hikers are dropped off on backcountry airstrips, like this one,
24:02and then collected again when their hike is over.
24:06And when these small planes lift off, passengers get a chance to soar through the valleys
24:12of one of America's most stunning landscapes, where high ridges plunge into canyons below.
24:22And wildlife thrives, including one species that's only found in North America, mountain goats.
24:33Even in winter, they can survive above the treeline, thanks to their thick coats.
24:39Their long claws and their hooves make them perfect climbers in Idaho's rugged mountains.
24:49Senator Frank Church died from cancer just days after this wilderness was named in his honor,
24:55and after years of working hard to protect wild lands across Idaho and the U.S.
25:01He knew all too well the environmental impacts that industry can have on the land,
25:07like the giant scars that can be left behind by mining the riches buried in Idaho's soil.
25:16There's no place in Idaho that's been more affected by the mining industry than a region of the north called Coeur d'Alene.
25:23It's centered around the city of Coeur d'Alene, which happens to be one of the state's biggest tourist spots,
25:28thanks in part to its famous floating green, a man-made island golf green
25:34that often moves around this lake at the Coeur d'Alene Resort,
25:37luring thousands of golfers every year to try their luck on hole number 14.
25:43In the early 1800s, it was French fur traders that were being lured to this part of Idaho to barter for beaver pelts with local tribes.
25:52Then, miners arrived, and by the end of the century, they were unearthing thousands of tons of lead and zinc every month.
26:01One of the biggest operations was the Bunker Hill and Sullivan Mine, here in the Silver Valley.
26:07It generated millions of dollars in profits for its investors, but left a terrifying legacy for those who lived here.
26:17Between 1884 and 1968, this one mine covered the valley with 100 million tons of toxic waste
26:26and exposed women and children here to dangerous levels of lead.
26:31It's now one of the largest Superfund cleanup sites in the country.
26:36The toxic hillsides around the mine were once bustling with miners who worked 24-7 to unearth treasure under Idaho's soil,
26:45and whose disputes with the company they worked for led to an act of terrorism that shocked the nation.
26:53It all started because the Bunker Hill and Sullivan Mine paid its workers much less than other mines in the region.
27:00When the miners banded together to demand a fair wage, the company offered only a modest increase
27:06and demanded the workers renounce their union membership.
27:11The miners accepted neither.
27:15On the morning of April 29, 1899, a group of miners hijacked a passenger train in Burke.
27:22As the train steamed up the Silver Valley, more miners hopped aboard and loaded on 80 boxes of dynamite.
27:32After the train pulled into the Bunker Hill and Sullivan Mine complex, the workers detonated their explosives,
27:38turning a central mill building into tinder and destroying a key piece of equipment inside called a concentrator.
27:46Two people died, and riots and mayhem followed.
27:51Idaho's governor at the time, Frank Stunenberg, declared martial law and called in federal troops to reestablish law and order.
28:00They responded by imprisoning up to 800 miners in cramped and filthy cells called bullpens.
28:09Less than two years later, in 1901, Stunenberg retired.
28:14But the Bunker Hill miners never forgot the humiliation of having been imprisoned in their fight for a fair wage.
28:22One night, the former governor arrived home, undid the latch on his gate, and was blown to smithereens by a bomb.
28:32A former Bunker Hill miner named Harry Orchard confessed to the crime.
28:39Orchard spent the last 46 years of his life here at the old Idaho State Penitentiary in Boise,
28:45which is now a museum that documents more than a century of Idaho's worst criminals and their escapes, executions, and infamous crimes.
28:55For Orchard, life inside the state pen wasn't actually that much different than working Idaho's mines.
29:02Much of his time was spent chiseling away in this rock quarry, mining sandstone used to expand his own prison's walls.
29:13That work helped the prison grow from a single cell house to a massive complex enclosed by a 17-foot high wall.
29:21Despite being a high-security facility, 90 prisoners escaped from the state pen, most while on work detail,
29:30while others tunneled through the prison's brittle sandstone walls.
29:36The most famous escapee was a femme fatale named Lida Southard, who was convicted of murdering one of her husbands.
29:44Her nickname was Flypaper Lida, since she was accused of boiling flypaper to extract arsenic,
29:52and then feeding it to her husband, some say in a freshly baked apple pie.
30:01Even for many of the state's most cold-hearted convicts, the prospect of spending the rest of their lives in the Idaho State Pen must have seemed terrifying.
30:10But for those not behind bars, many might argue that the most forbidding place in Idaho is this,
30:17a deep chasm so daunting to early travelers they named it Hell's Canyon.
30:26In 2008, a hiker was exploring this deep Idaho canyon when he stumbled on a cache of old textiles made from cedar bark.
30:36Archaeologists later dated them to the 14th century.
30:41They belonged to the Nez Perce, who lived in this gorge for thousands of years,
30:46and believe that a mythical figure they called Coyote carved its steep walls to protect the tribe.
30:53In places, those walls dropped nearly 9,000 feet to the Snake River below,
30:59making it the deepest river gorge in North America, deeper even than the Grand Canyon.
31:05But starting in 1855, the Nez Perce would have this sacred canyon and most of their lands taken from them by force.
31:15In a treaty signed in 1855, the U.S. government promised the Nez Perce rights on more than 7.5 million acres of land
31:24that stretched across present-day Oregon, Washington, and Idaho.
31:28But in 1863, after gold was found in Nez Perce territory,
31:33the U.S. government decided to take control of 90% of that same land
31:38and force the tribe to crowd onto a much smaller reservation at its heart in the Lapwai Valley.
31:45The Nez Perce had always maintained good relations with white settlers,
31:50but for some, the injustice of losing most of their land was too much to bear,
31:55and a few young fighters retaliated, killing 18 white settlers.
32:01In 1877, the U.S. cavalry was sent in to track down and force these holdouts onto the reservation.
32:07But little did the U.S. government know, they would soon be at war with the tribe.
32:13It was here, at Whitebird Canyon, that Captain David Perry and about 100 troops
32:18finally came face-to-face with about 65 Nez Perce warriors.
32:23Chief Joseph sent a peace party to meet with Perry,
32:27but as they approached, one of Perry's men fired on the delegation,
32:31and an all-out firefight ensued.
32:35Perry's bugleman was the first to fall,
32:37which meant Perry now had no way to communicate orders to his soldiers in the battle.
32:42Soon, here in this valley, his men were being slaughtered.
32:48It was like two bulldogs meeting, Nez Perce warrior Yellow Wolf later recalled.
32:54We drove them back across the mountain.
32:57In the end, Perry lost more than 30 men.
33:02When Washington got word of this humiliating defeat, more troops were sent in,
33:07and soon, 700 Nez Perce were on the run across Idaho.
33:13Finally, in what is now known as the Battle of Bear Paw,
33:17the Nez Perce were defeated.
33:21In October 1877, Chief Joseph agreed to lay down his arms.
33:28Hear me, my chiefs, he told his tribe.
33:31I am tired. My heart is sick and sad.
33:34From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more, forever.
33:40Chief Joseph and the other survivors were promised
33:43that they could return safely to the reservation in Idaho.
33:46But they were shipped by train to Oklahoma instead.
33:51The great Nez Perce chief never saw his homeland again.
33:57While he and other Nez Perce in Oklahoma would have done anything to be able to return home,
34:02there were many settlers in the Idaho Territory that wished they weren't even part of Idaho at all.
34:08That's because northern and southern Idaho were almost like two separate regions at the time,
34:13since rugged mountains and a lack of roads divided the two.
34:18In 1878, 96% of residents of the northern Panhandle
34:22approved a measure to secede and join the Washington Territory.
34:27To keep Idaho in one piece, legislators in Boise started offering concessions to the north,
34:33including a new road that would link north and south.
34:39And in 1889, they offer the ultimate concession of them all,
34:43choosing the northern town of Moscow as the site of the new University of Idaho.
34:49One year later, in 1890, Idaho gained statehood, with its northern Panhandle intact.
34:56Today, the tensions between the north and south are pretty much subsided,
35:00except during the annual face-off between the Boise State Broncos and the Idaho Vandals
35:05in their pursuit of the Governor's Trophy.
35:08Every other year, that game was played here at University of Idaho's Kibbe Dome,
35:13until 2010, when the Boise State President announced he would no longer attend the series.
35:19A local newspaper had reported that he had found Vandals fans nasty and inebriated.
35:26In 1889, those might have been fighting words that could have caused residents of northern Idaho
35:31to pledge their allegiance forever to Washington State.
35:35But these days, no matter what team they're rooting for, north or south, they're all still Idahoans,
35:42and part of a state that has a lot to be proud of,
35:45including one of America's most impressive sites, known as the Niagara of the West.
35:55In the middle of the 19th century, Oregon Trail pioneers did everything they could
35:59to get across Idaho's vast eastern desert.
36:03As fast as their horses, wagons, and feet would take them.
36:08But when U.S. government scientists at the Atomic Energy Commission
36:11were scouring this part of Idaho in the 1940s, they stopped in their tracks
36:16and decided this was the perfect spot to build the world's first atomic power plant.
36:25That building is now known as Experimental Breeder Reactor 1.
36:30But getting energy out of EBR-1 didn't turn out to be easy.
36:35When the reactor's power was first tested on December 20, 1951,
36:39it only generated enough energy to light four 200-watt light bulbs,
36:44barely enough power for the scientists to throw a celebration party.
36:49Yet, that first baby step was still considered a wild success.
36:55But a few years later, EBR-1 showed just how dangerous atomic energy could be.
37:01During a test in 1955, a technician inserted the wrong cooling rod into the reactor.
37:07Within seconds, half the core was melting down.
37:12Luckily, workers isolated the reaction and evacuated the plant before radiation spread.
37:20But by then, Idaho had already earned a new title,
37:24the site of the first nuclear meltdown in history.
37:30In 1955, another team of scientists at the Idaho National Lab
37:35achieved a major victory in the pursuit of nuclear power.
37:39It happened in the middle of the night on Sunday, July 17.
37:43That's when engineers at a reactor called Borax-3, which once stood here,
37:48flicked a switch and powered the nearby city of Arco with nuclear energy.
37:59The scientists kept it a secret for a week,
38:02before revealing to the residents of Arco and the world
38:05that the test had actually happened and had been a success.
38:11Today, City Hall proudly displays its moniker,
38:14the first atomic city in the world.
38:20From Arco, the Idaho Desert stretches west.
38:24But while it may be dry on the surface,
38:27deep underground is a watery world called the Big Lost River.
38:34When water from nearby mountains reaches this stretch of desert,
38:37the porous basalt soil acts like a giant sponge,
38:41and the water simply disappears underground.
38:46But it keeps moving very slowly south.
38:50200 years later, and 120 miles away,
38:54it finally re-emerges in a spectacular display.
39:00These are just some of the hundreds of waterfalls
39:02known as Thousand Springs Falls, outside of Hagerman,
39:06where water from the Big Lost River finally appears again,
39:11cascading down steep bluffs to join the Snake River below.
39:17The water in Thousand Springs Falls is crystal clear and oxygen-rich,
39:22thanks to being filtered in volcanic soil for close to two centuries.
39:28In 1928, Jack and Selma Tingey decided to reroute water
39:32from Thousand Springs to their newly built fish hatchery.
39:36The clean, clear water proved to be perfect for the fish.
39:41And today, hatcheries along this stretch of the Snake River
39:44raise 70% of all trout eaten in the U.S.
39:49Long before people raised fish here on the banks of the Snake River
39:53and built the dams that line it today,
39:55this was once home to one of the world's great salmon runs.
40:00Every summer, so many Pacific salmon fought their way upstream to spawn
40:05that Native American fishermen could throw a spear
40:07just about anywhere to catch a meal.
40:11But the fish could only go so far upstream.
40:15When they reached this wall of stone,
40:17they were left swimming in circles below.
40:22It's known as the Niagara of the West, Shoshone Falls.
40:27Even in the dry summer season,
40:29these waterfalls still cascade down more than 200 feet,
40:33making the Shoshone Falls 46 feet taller than their New York cousin.
40:39But as the Idaho snow melts each spring,
40:42Shoshone Falls is transformed into one of Idaho's great natural wonders,
40:49an impressive torrent of water that's best experienced from the air.
40:58But while the water of the Snake River
41:01has carved some of America's most dramatic canyons,
41:04it's also given birth to valleys rich with fields and farms.
41:10When summer arrives in Idaho,
41:12canola flowers blanket close to 40,000 acres of the state.
41:17In the south, they've helped make the Snake River Valley
41:20Idaho's farming epicenter
41:23and helped earn it the title Magic Valley.
41:28It was here that Idaho's first potato billionaire got his start.
41:34In 1924, a young farmer named John Richard Simplot quit school
41:39and went into farming for himself.
41:42He leased 120 acres of land and grew potatoes,
41:45then reinvested his profits.
41:48Business boomed.
41:52In the 1950s, Simplot pioneered a method
41:55to freeze-dry French fries so they could be shipped all over the country.
42:00In 1967, he made a deal with McDonald's founder Ray Kroc.
42:06Simplot would be the primary supplier of frozen fries
42:09for the giant fast food chain.
42:11Today, the Simplot company rakes in billions every year.
42:16J.R. Simplot passed away in 2008 at the age of 99,
42:20but his legacy lives on with every fry sold.
42:26Running right through Idaho's potato country
42:30is the Snake River Gorge.
42:33The only way to get across it here, outside Twin Falls,
42:36is to take the Perrin Bridge,
42:38which was once the highest bridge in the world
42:41when it was built in 1927.
42:44But when a famous daredevil named Evil Knievel
42:47arrived in this part of Idaho,
42:49he decided he would try to cross the canyon
42:52and not by the bridge, but in the air.
42:57In the early 1970s,
42:59Knievel decided he wanted to jump the Grand Canyon on a motorcycle.
43:04But the U.S. government said no.
43:07So, he scouted the country by helicopter,
43:10searching for a comparable challenge.
43:13He got excited when he discovered this 1,600-foot-wide gap
43:16along the Snake River, downstream from Hell's Canyon.
43:23Knievel went to work, leasing land on both sides of the river.
43:27Then, on top of this angled dirt mound,
43:30his team built a giant 180-foot-high launch structure,
43:34which is now gone.
43:36On September 8, 1974,
43:38Knievel climbed into a steam-powered rocket,
43:41the SkyCycle X-2.
43:43He'd predicted he would reach a speed of 200 miles per hour during launch
43:47and 350 while in the air.
43:51A crowd of thousands looked on
43:53and millions more watched on television
43:55as a crane lowered Knievel into the rocket.
43:58The SkyCycle's engine fired
44:00and shot him up the ramp
44:04and into the sky.
44:07But then, something went wrong.
44:11Knievel's parachute system deployed too early
44:14and brought the rocket to a stop in midair.
44:18As it floated down,
44:19it looked as if Knievel would land in the rushing Snake River.
44:24But strong canyon winds blew him backwards to the rocks just in time.
44:30He survived with only a broken nose.
44:33Not bad for a daredevil who had broken over 40 bones in his lifetime.
44:38The Snake River canyon jump was one of the last for the aging Knievel
44:43and proved that there just might be places in Idaho that humans can't conquer.
44:49And with so much wilderness in this rugged western state,
44:53it's not hard to see why.
44:57While native tribes found ways to survive here,
45:00even in its most hellish canyons,
45:04Idaho has always been a land that's challenged its pioneers.
45:09From the miners who risked their lives in their pursuit of gold,
45:13to the settlers who navigated great fields of lava
45:16and towering craters on their journeys west,
45:20to the scientists who lit up the first atomic city in the world,
45:25and the rafters who ride the River of No Return.
45:31These are the people that call the wildest land in the lower 48 home.
45:36This is Idaho.