Pardon the reminiscing, but this week marks a significant personal anniversary: Exactly a half century ago, I came to live in Idaho.
I had packed up my belongings in Virginia and my dad and I drove cross country to Moscow, where I would start school at the University of Idaho. The late summer weather was warm but temperate. Eric Clapton’s “I Shot the Sheriff” and Rufus’ “Tell Me Something Good” were on the radio. The Watergate era was just over; we had a brand new president in Gerald Ford.
The University of Idaho campus bore a general resemblance to today’s. Some of the buildings have changed, and new developments have appeared here and there. But it had the attractive leafy, collegiate feel you can still see.
The college newspaper where I went to work and first got to experience journalism, the Idaho Argonaut, still is publishing, online at least, which puts it ahead of any number of big-league newspapers out in the “real world.”
After a few weeks, I began putting in some time as well on the campus radio station, KUOI-FM, as an announcer. The newspaper and the radio station were the two forms of mass media in the area, other than the small educational television station on campus (it wasn’t much like public television as we know it now). Mass media in the area otherwise included the newspapers at Moscow (now no longer daily and no longer printed there) and Lewiston. Occasionally we might see one from Spokane. Signals from radio or television stations beyond Moscow were patchy at best. And that was it.
Idaho’s population then was about 750,000, today smaller than one congressional district, though then the state had two (which it still does). Ada County’s population was about 150,000. Idaho’s population was relatively much less urban, and there were new regional and sub-regional centers. There was much more commerce in the smaller communities, and more of it was locally owned.
News was happening, as it always does. A week or two after my arrival at Moscow, attention statewide was focused 400 road miles away at Twin Falls, where the daredevil Evel Knievel was trying to jump across the Snake River canyon. (He didn’t make it, as you may have heard.)
I was arriving in Idaho at a time of national political transition and Idaho, like the rest of the country, was paying close attention to the political landscape.
The governor then was Cecil Andrus, a Democrat, still in his first term but just about to be re-elected to a second term in one of the largest landslides in state history.
The lieutenant governor, Jack Murphy, an experienced and successful Republican, was the candidate who lost to him. The lieutenant governor’s job was taken over by Democrat John Evans, who a few years later would become governor himself.
At the top of the ballot was the race for U.S. Senate. The winner in that contest, by a strong margin, was Democrat Frank Church, who won his fourth term. The margin might have been larger except that, as some of his backers acknowledged afterward, they underestimated the opposition. The junior senator was Republican James McClure.
As now, the state Senate in 1974 had 35 members. Five decades ago, its members consisted of 23 Republicans and 12 Democrats. (The margin is 28 Republicans and seven Democrats today.) None of those dozen Democrats came from either Ada County or the Wood River Valley. Here are the communities where they did live: Pocatello, St. Maries, Tetonia, Malad, Lewiston, Mullan, Burley, Moscow, Sandpoint, Cottonwood and Orofino. The situation was similar in the Idaho House. It’s a stunning contrast to today.
The 1974 election did not greatly change any of that, though Democrats did pick up two Senate seats and in the House went from 19 seats to 27 out of 70. (The number of House Democrats today is 11.)
I do have a point to make in reciting all this:
At the time, the overall condition of Idaho seemed, simply, the way it was and probably long would be.
It wasn’t. Not everything changed, but a whole lot has, vastly.
Don’t ever say that nothing changes. Because it does.
Stapilus is a former Idaho newspaper reporter and editor who blogs at ridenbaugh.com. He may be contacted at stapilus@ridenbaugh.com.
