Idaho Trivia & Tidbits - Page 6

Looking for Idaho trivia? Try our list Idaho little know facts, tidbits and trivia.

Chocolate with a hint of hot pepper is the signature flavor at Cowgirl Chocolates in Moscow (pop. 21,291). Owner and artist Marilyn Lysohir founded the company in 1997, and created a logo featuring gun-toting May Lillie to market her "candy with a kick." Lillie was born May Manning and fell in love and married Gordon Lillie, better known as Pawnee Bill of Pawnee Bill's Wild West Show, in the late 1800s.

first appeared: 4/23/2006

Evel Knievel attempted to jump the Snake River Canyon, not Hell’s Canyon as reported in a previous edition. The launching pad for his 1974 attempt can be seen from the Perrine Bridge near Twin Falls (pop. 34,469). Knievel and his rocket-powered "skycycle" made it across the river, but landed in the canyon rather than on the opposite cliff after Knievel’s parachute opened prematurely. He survived.

first appeared: 4/9/2006

In the early 1920s, adventurer Robert Limbert explored much of the Great Rift, a crack in the earth’s surface southwest of Arco (pop. 1,026) that’s about 60 miles long, up to five miles wide and surrounded by a volcanic landscape of lava flows and craters. The volcanic rift began forming 15,000 years ago and was designated Craters of the Moon National Monument in 1924, after Limbert strongly promoted it.

first appeared: 3/26/2006

The most recent eruptions in the Great Rift are believed to have occurred about 2,100 years ago and could have been witnessed by ancestors of the Shoshone Indians. A Shoshone legend describes a huge serpent that, when disturbed by lightning, tightened its coils around a mountain until rock melted and flames erupted from the cracks, with the ensuing heat killing the serpent.

first appeared: 3/26/2006

Gretchen Fraser (1919-1994), who made Sun Valley (pop. 1,427) her home, became the first U.S. skier to capture an Olympic gold medal, winning the slalom and also earning the silver in alpine-combined at the 1948 Olympic Games in St. Moritz, Switzerland. An ambassador for Sun Valley and skiing in general, Fraser helped develop ski programs for injured World War II soldiers and other amputees.

first appeared: 3/12/2006

The launching pad for Evel Knievel's 1974 attempt to jump the Snake River Canyon can be seen from the Perrine Bridge near Twin Falls (pop. 34,469). Knievel and his rocket-powered "skycycle" made it across the river, but landed in the canyon rather than on the opposite cliff after Knievel's parachute opened prematurely.

first appeared: 2/26/2006

Two of writer Ernest Hemingway’s friends joined his final resting place in Ketchum (pop. 3,003) last summer. Tillie Arnold and her husband, Lloyd, befriended the Nobel Prize winner after meeting him in Sun Valley in 1939. When Tillie died in January 2005 at age 99, arrangements were made to bury the couple’s remains near Hemingway’s grave in the Ketchum cemetery.

first appeared: 2/12/2006

Born in Meridian (pop. 34,919) on March 12, 1930, major league baseball pitcher Vern Law won the Cy Young Award in 1960, and also was part of the National League All-Star team that year. Law played for 16 seasons with the Pittsburgh Pirates, from 1950 to 1967, with a career record that includes appearing in 483 games, with 1,092 strikeouts.

first appeared: 1/29/2006

It’s bedlam each year in Preston (pop. 4,682) during the pre-Christmas Idaho Festival of Lights. Teams decorate beds, dress drivers in pajamas and race along State Street, changing the sheets and switching drivers as they go. The Franklin County Medical Center and Preston Chamber of Commerce sponsor the Great Night Before Christmas International Championship Bed Race.

first appeared: 1/15/2006

MISS IDAHO 2006 2006—Tracey Renee Brown has maintained a perfect 4.0 GPA throughout high school and college. But away from the classroom, the Post Falls (pop. 17,247) native’s forte is ballet, which she’s been studying for more than 10 years. Brown also is involved in breast cancer awareness and raised more than $10,000 when she competed in the American Cancer Society’s Relay For Life.

first appeared: 1/8/2006

The National Postal Museum reports that one of the oddest packages ever mailed was 4-year-old May Pierstorff, whose parents sent her from Grangeville (pop. 3,228) to Lewiston (pop. 30,904) on Feb. 19, 1914. May, who traveled in the train’s mail compartment, weighed less than the 50-pound parcel post limit and her 53-cent postage was less than the train fare.

first appeared: 1/1/2006

At the Silverwood Theme Park just north of Coeur d’Alene (pop. 34,514), the wooden roller coaster known as Tremors reaches speeds of 60 mph and drops more than 100 feet into underground tunnels. Silverwood, one of the Northwest’s largest theme parks, features two other roller coasters—the Timber Terror and Corkscrew—among its 60 rides and attractions.

first appeared: 12/18/2005

When gold prospector Tom Irwin left his cabin in the early 1880s, he blasted the entrance to his nearby mine, reportedly to hide it. He did an excellent job—the mine wasn’t rediscovered until 1991, near Kellogg (pop. 2,395). Today, the Crystal Gold Mine is open for underground tours that reveal gold and silver embedded in the tunnel’s rock walls.

first appeared: 12/4/2005

Northeast of Sun Valley (pop. 1,427) on the Trail Creek Road is a memorial to Ernest Hemingway, featuring a bust of the famous novelist and an inscribed poem, which begins "Best of all he loved the fall." Hemingway, who made his home in Idaho from 1959 until his death in 1961, wrote the poem as a eulogy for his friend Gene Van Guilder who was killed in a hunting accident.

first appeared: 11/20/2005

Professional jockey Laverne Fator (1902-1937), from Hailey (pop. 7,462), rode in nearly 5,000 horse races between 1919 and 1933, winning more than 1,000 of them. In 1926 alone, he won 143 races, and in 1925 and 1926, he was the nation’s leading jockey. Fator, whose mounts included Black Maria, Grey Lag, Pompey and Scapa Flow, was inducted in the National Museum of Racing’s Hall of Fame in 1955.

first appeared: 11/6/2005

At a height of 682 feet, the KMVT Television Tower in Jerome (pop. 7,780) is reported to be the state’s tallest structure. The tower was built in 1961 for KLIX-TV, which went on the air in Twin Falls (pop. 36,742) and the Magic Valley in 1955. Two years later, the station changed ownership and its call letters; the new letters stand for "Magic Valley Television."

first appeared: 10/23/2005

Fifty-seven firefighters who died fighting the August 1910 forest fire that burned 3 million acres of northern Idaho and western Montana are buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in St. Maries (pop. 1,652). Seventy mph winds pushed the fire across the timberland for two days before they subsided and rain began to fall. Known as the Big Blowup, the conflagration influenced the nation’s fire policy for years to come, as foresters became determined to eradicate even underbrush fires in national forests.

first appeared: 10/9/2005

The state Legislature designated the square dance as the state’s official American folk dance on March 17, 1989. The dance, traditionally accompanied by fiddle, accordion, banjo and guitar, is based on the English Morris and French quadrille dances, but the tradition of using a caller is uniquely American.

first appeared: 9/25/2005

The Clearwater and Snake River National Recreation Trail connects Lewiston (pop. 30,904) with Hell’s Gate State Park and Clarkston, Wash. (pop. 7,337), with 25 miles of paved pathways for walkers, runners and cyclists. The trail was constructed on a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers levee system and was named a national trail in 1988.

first appeared: 9/18/2005

A 14-year-old, 288-pound female sloth bear from the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo is a recent addition to Julia Davis Park in downtown Boise. The bear, whose species is native to India, lives at Zoo Boise, an 11-acre zoo in the park that’s home to more than 200 animals from 80 species, including a red panda and Komodo dragon.

first appeared: 9/11/2005

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