Salem may be Oregon’s state capital but Portland is the city everyone knows. It’s got that fresh forest air mixed in with salty sea winds. Gulls squawk over progressive neighbourhoods with slogans that wouldn’t be out of place in Southern California. I visited the Oregon Historical Society and the Oregon Read more…
The museum in Boise interprets the path and impact Basque people have had in the US, mostly in Mexico and California. The museum building was built in 1912 for Juan Cruz Anduiza for Basque shepherds who spent winter in Boise. Large numbers of Basque moved to California in the nineteenth Read more…
In January 2022, I stood outside Toronto Metropolitan University’s Digital Media Zone building, where the university’s startups are incubated, in the bitter Canadian winter waiting for Chris Bryson, CEO of New School Foods, to let me into his lab. A bunch of other visitors met up with another startup and Read more…
Boise wasn’t the first state capital, that honor went to Lewiston in the north with the border of Washington. Back then, Idaho was grouped together in a territory with Wyoming and Montana, but the southern part of the state grew rapidly with the Oregon Trail, logging, and mining. When people Read more…
The state museum is aptly located in the state capital of Boise. It’s a natural history museum on the main level of the state’s varied landscape that includes gorgeous gorges, majestic mountains, curvy canyons, and desolate deserts. Travellers driving north towards Boise on the I-84 would’ve seen the Snake River Read more…
Bruneau is about an hour southeast of Boise and it has two natural sites: sand dunes in the middle of a mountain range and the Bruneau Canyon. Three conditions made the sand dunes possible: sand, wind, and a geographical trap for the sand. Hills surround the dunes on three sides Read more…
Bruneau is about an hour southeast of Boise and it has two natural sites: sand dunes in the middle of a mountain range and the Bruneau Canyon. The canyon cradles the Bruneau River, named after Canadian trapper Pierre Bruneau. In the 1940s, the Mountain Home Air Force Base opened to Read more…
The Promontory Mountains just an hour north of Salt Lake City are scarred by the remnants of old railroad infrastructure. Cuts, fills, and culverts were used to bring trains up and down steep grades. The Union Pacific and Central Pacific railroads were racing to connect the country from coast to Read more…
The museum of Salt Lake City‘s history is run by volunteers and contains a keen collection of artifacts from the city’s past. Among them are lighting equipment used by pioneers and a restored 1902 fire engine. Pioneers could be railroad workers, miners, Mormons, or anyone else who travelled into the Read more…
Mormons established Zion in Missouri in 1831. The government thought that so many Mormons in one place with non-Mormons would cause unrest, so they were relocated to a new area called Caldwell by 1838. In the years that followed, the Mormons were displaced and ended up in Illinois. The founder, Read more…