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About Idaho

"...a lot of State this Idaho, that I didn't know about..." Ernest Hemingway

Idaho is one of America's most rural states with 83,000 square miles of land. Of that, 40% or 7 million areas are heavily covered with trees, making Idaho the most heavily forested of the Rocky Mountain States.

Idaho's Frank Church Wilderness of No Return is the nation's largest roadless wilderness area in the Lower 48 states, with 2.6 million acres. It is second in size only to California's Death Valley Wilderness.

Idaho has more than 2,000 lakes, 239,000 acres of reservoirs and 16,000 miles of streams. Idaho also boasts the deepest river gorge in North America and a waterfall taller than Niagra Falls.

With over 3,100 whitewater river miles, Idaho lays claim to being the whitewater capital of the world.

Idaho has the oldest ski resort in the U.S. - Sun Valley 1936 - and the newest at Tamarack Resort 2004. And Brundage Mountain in McCall has Idaho's largest cat skiing terrain with 2,000 acres of backcountry terrain.

Over a dozen magazines have put Boise on their "best cities" list. In fact Forbes in April 2007 ranked Boise as the #3 best metropolitan area to do business or start a career. With a population of just under 200,000 and growing, Boise's economic climate is one of the healthiest in the nation.