page_title: Lewiston, Idaho
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Lewiston, Idaho / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Caption on image: B 2520 Bollinger Hotel, Lewiston, Idaho. Copyright 1905 by Henry Fair Originally a Nez Perce settlement, Lewiston, Idaho, founded in 1861, and was named after Meriwether Lewis. It is one of Idaho's oldest towns and, through the Snake River, its only seaport. In 1860's the town enjoyed a boom when gold was found in the region and in 1863-1865 it served as the state capital. Subjects (LCTGM): Hotels--Idaho--Lewiston Subjects (LCSH): Bollinger Hotel (Lewiston, Idaho); Lewiston (Idaho)--Buildings, structures, etc.
context_page_description: Lewiston is a city and the county seat of Nez Perce County, Idaho, United States, in the state's north central region. It is the second-largest city in the northern Idaho region, behind Coeur d'Alene, and ninth-largest in the state. Lewiston is the principal city of the Lewiston, ID-WA Metropolitan Statistical Area, which includes all of Nez Perce County and Asotin County, Washington. As of the 2010 census, the population of Lewiston was 31,894, up from 30,904 in 2000.
  Lewiston is located at the confluence of the Snake River and Clearwater River, thirty miles upstream and southeast of the Lower Granite Dam. Because of dams on the Snake and Columbia River, Lewiston is reachable by some ocean-going vessels. The Port of Lewiston has the distinction of being the farthest inland port east of the West Coast. The Lewiston-Nez Perce County Airport serves the city by air.
  Lewiston was founded in 1862 in the wake of a gold rush which began the previous year near Pierce, northeast of Lewiston. In 1863, Lewiston became the first capital of the newly created Idaho Territory.
context_section_description: The Nimiipuu (Nez Perce) have inhabited the area for thousands of years. 
  The first people of European ancestry to visit the Lewiston area were members of the David Thompson expedition of 1803. Thompson was looking to establish fur trading posts for the Hudson's Bay Company of British North America (now Canada). Thompson established the first white settlement in Idaho, MacKenzie's Post. But it soon failed as the local Nez Perce tribe's men considered beaver trapping to be women's work, the tribe was migratory and apparently women thought they already had enough to do. This was followed by the Lewis and Clark Expedition in October 1805. At the future townsite, they encountered settlements of the native Nez Perce, and they returned to the valley on their eastward trip from the Pacific in the spring of 1806.
  The town is believed to have been named after Meriwether Lewis and after Victor Trevitt's hometown of Lewiston, Maine, but people don't know that was the reason Vic Trevitt shouted the idea out. He simply stated the "Journal of Lewis and Clark" talked about being in the valley. The town was founded in 1861 in the wake of a gold rush which began the previous year near Pierce, northeast of Lewiston leading to the Nez Perce War and the removal of Nez Perce. The first newspaper in present-day Idaho, the Lewiston Teller began publication in the city of Lewiston, Washington Territory in 1862, and was joined by the present (and only) newspaper, the Lewiston Morning Tribune in September 1892. In 1863 Lewiston became the capital of the newly created Idaho Territory. Thomas J. Beall, one of the first three white settlers in Lewiston, wrote many of the Lewiston Tribune's first articles, and continued to do so until his death at the age of 89.
  The city's stint as a seat of the new territory's government was short-lived. As the gold rush quieted in northern Idaho, it heated up in a new mineral rush in southwestern Idaho, centered in Idaho City, which became the largest city in the Northwest in the mid-1860s. A resolution in late 1864 to have the capital moved from Lewiston to Boise was passed by the Idaho Territorial Legislature on December 7, six weeks before the territorial legislature's session legally began, and after litigation, on a split decision decided by one vote on the territorial supreme court on geographic lines.
  Boise became the capital in 1866; the move was very unpopular in northern Idaho and in violation of a court order. So, the territorial governor, Caleb Lyon and the territorial secretary, secretly took the territorial seal, archives, and treasury, and fled from Lewiston. Lyon went down river to Portland, Oregon, a trip marked by the alleged theft of the treasury from his steamship cabin. The territorial secretary departed southward for Boise to avoid the public outrage that was sure to erupt.
  North Idahoans were somewhat placated in 1889 when the University of Idaho was awarded to nearby Moscow, thirty miles (50 km) north, and began instruction in 1892. Lewiston State Normal School, now Lewis-Clark State College, was established in 1893, as was another normal school or teacher education college, now defunct, in the south at Albion. These were the state's first three institutions of higher education. Lewiston was the site of the first public school in Idaho, in 1862. Hence, it carries the designation of Lewiston Independent School District #1. (Boise was second, opening school doors in 1865.)
  Lewiston's history has been researched and documented extensively by former Mayor (1982-1992) Dr. Gene Mueller, who published Lewiston: From packtrains and tent saloons to highways and brick stores : a century of progress, 1861-1962 and Lewiston: A pictorial history.
caption: The Bollinger Hotel in 1905
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