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 Canyon to their right.
The upper level is on the state’s human history. Emigrants headed out west through the Oregon Trail had to pass through the mountains in Idaho. The migration caused tensions with the Native Americans that led to the Bear River Massacre resulting in over 250 Shoshone deaths, the deadliest in the American West.
Fishing, hunting, and skiing are all available in the geographically diverse state. But it’s not all rosy, the museum has bits of sad history, too. Northerners tried to secede to Washington state when the capital was moved from Lewiston south to Boise, the much-hated Aryan Nations began and ended in Idaho, and the Sunshine Mine disaster killed 91 miners in 1973. Idaho has the deepest mines in the country with one reaching down over 9,500 feet deep in 2016.
Idaho isn’t just known for the potatoes it supplies to McDonald’s, it’s also known to be the home of nuclear energy. Arco was the first town in the world to be lit by nuclear power and the world’s first nuclear-powered submarine also had its reactor made in Idaho.
The underground gallery is aimed at children. Mini-sized stores and train stations allow them to explore the history of towns in Idaho during the last century. It’s easily the best museum in Boise.
