The State of Lincoln is proposed state in the North-West United States. It was also once proposed that Wyoming Territory be called Lincoln Territory.
Contents |
When Wyoming Territory was formed in 1868, it was originally called Lincoln Territory. This name sparked much debate in Congress because, at that time, no state, and only the Washington Territory (formed February 11, 1853), had been named for any particular person. (Although the Carolinas, Virginia, and Georgia were named, after British monarchs; Maryland after King Charles I of England's French Queen consort, Henriette Marie; Pennsylvania for William Penn; and Louisiana for Louis XIV.) Nevada senator, James W. Nye, finally proposed the name Wyoming. This was a revitalization of the name originally suggested when a proposal to form the territory had failed to pass three years earlier. The name came from Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania. Wyoming was the simple English transliteration of the Lenape Indian tribe's word for "large plains."[1]
The State of Lincoln has been proposed to consist of the Panhandle of Idaho and Eastern Washington (that is, east of the Cascade Mountains). It was first proposed by Idaho in 1865, when the capital was moved from Lewiston in December, 1864 to its present-day location of Boise in January, 1865, in an Idaho greatly reduced in land area. The original Idaho Territory, from a bill signed by President Lincoln in March, 1865, was declared by Governor William Wallace in Lewiston, July 4, 1863 and included present day Idaho, and virtually all of present day Montana and Wyoming, making it larger in land area than Texas. Montana was made a territory in May, 1864 and the Panhandle was specifically excluded in order to prevent Lewiston, west of both the Continental Divide along the crest of the Rockies and of the Bitteroot Mountain Range, from remaining the capital. The reasoning was that Lewiston sits on the western edge, across the Snake River from Washington. Montana stretches to North Dakota. The 1865 proposal was to make the panhandle its own state. This proposal failed, but in 1901 another proposal was made, this time to combine the Idaho Panhandle with Eastern Washington to create the state of Lincoln, in honor of President Abraham Lincoln. A third proposal popularized in the late 1920s to consist of eastern Washington, northern Idaho and western Montana to the Continental Divide. From the Washington end, proposals have been made as recently as 1996, 1999, and 2005. Idaho saw a corresponding campaign for North Idaho, financed by the sale of t-shirts reading, "North Idaho - A State of Mind". Other than Lincoln, the names "Columbia" and "Eastern (or East) Washington" were proposed to be used for the state.
While the disconnection between Western Washington and Eastern Washington is well known and documented, Northern Idaho has a similar dynamic in which its residents often feel disconnected from the state's political center in Boise. Parallel suggestions of a "State of Kootenai" have been made, referring to a proposed union of the six northern-most counties of Idaho, and the six western-most counties of Montana, creating a geographically, politically, and ecologically connected state of 524,888 residents, putting it ahead of other states such as Wyoming. The Idaho Panhandle is most often considered to be the ten most northerly counties (Boundary, Bonner, Benewah, Shoshone, Kootenai, Latah, Nez Perce, Clearwater, Lewis and Idaho) with the Salmon River, also known as the "River of No Return" because of the speed and rapids as the natural divider. Other conceptions of a potential "State of Lincoln" have been rendered, specifically a possible combination of Eastern Washington and Eastern Oregon.
The people of Eastern Oregon also often express the same frustration with being coupled with Portland and the region west of the Cascades that Eastern Washingtonians do with respect to Seattle. This proposed coupling would create one of the largest states in the country, stretching all the way from the eastern foothills of the Cascade Mountain Range to the border with Idaho in the east. Both the respective Idaho and Washington State Legislature among these three states have seen bills proposing secession or splintering. Idaho would not go along at the time as the Panhandle generated more tax revenue per capita than the south. If combined with the proposed State of Jefferson, which overlaps a proposed Oregon-Washington "State of Lincoln" in southeastern Oregon and is proposed for many of the same reasons, it would create a state that is even larger.
The Inland Empire region roughly corresponds to the area that might comprise such a State of Lincoln. The largest city would be Spokane, Washington, which is presently Washington's second largest and the greater Spokane area is the third largest population base in the northwestern US behind Seattle and Portland.