Washington became a State five years ago.  It is a great mining country, but is still more noted for its wonderful lumber resources.  The trade from Puget Sound is tremendous.  One company alone employs 1,250 men in saw mills and logging, and it is responsible for having introduced improved machinery of every type into the section.  The early history of the great lumber business is full of interest, and this is one point alone in which the advance has been tremendous.  Another great company cut up 63,000,000 feet of lumber in one year, and shipped more than half of it out of the country.  White cedar of the most costly grade is very common in Washington, and it is used for the manufacture of shingles, which sell for very high prices, and are regarded as unusually and, indeed, abnormally good.  White pine of immense quantity and size is also found.  Some of the logs are so large that they are only excelled by the phenomenal big trees of abnormal growth which are found some hundreds of miles farther south on the great Pacific Slope.

Idaho is another of the great States of the great Northwest.  It lies largely between the two States just described so briefly, and its shape is so peculiar that it has been spoken of as resembling a chair, with the Rocky Mountains and the Bitter Root Range as its front seat and back.  Another simile likens it to a right-angled triangle, with the Bitter Root Range as its base.  It is a vast tableland, wedge shape in character, and may be said to consist of a mass of mountain ranges packed up fold upon fold, one on top of the other.

Three names were submitted to Congress when the Territory was first named.  They were Shoshone, Montana and Idaho.  The last name was chosen, finally, because it is supposed to mean “The sight on the mountain.”  The more exact derivation of the name seems to be an old Shoshone legend, involving the fall of some mysterious object from the heavens upon one of the mountains.  The scenery in this State is varied in everything save in beauty, which is almost monotonous.  Bear Lake, one of its great attractions, is a fisherman’s paradise.  Its waters extend twenty miles in one direction and eight or nine miles in the other.  This vast expanse of water is one of the best trout fishing resorts in the world.  Although in a valley, Bear Lake is so high up in the mountains that its waters are frozen up for many months in the year, the ice seldom breaking up until well into April.  At all times the water is cold, and hence especially favorable for trout culture.  Lake Pen d’Oreilles is about thirty miles long and varies in width from an insignificant three miles to more than fifteen.  It is studded with islands of great beauty and much verdure.  Close by it is the Granite Mountain, with other hills and peaks averaging, perhaps, 10,000 feet in height.  The lake has an immense shore line, extending as much as 250 miles.  For fully a tenth of this distance the Northern Pacific tracks are close to the lake, affording passengers a very delightful view of this inland scene, which has been likened to the world-renowned Bavarian lake, Koenigs See.