Why Idaho Is Sitting On The Most Valuable Land In Human History

Why Idaho Is Sitting On The Most Valuable Land In Human History

Idaho looks like mountains, farmland, and potatoes.

But underneath it is something much bigger.

Southern Idaho sits across the ancient track of the Yellowstone hotspot — a mantle plume that burned a line of giant volcanic systems across the state for roughly 16 million years.

That volcanic history created the Snake River Plain.

The Snake River Plain created one of the most productive aquifers in America.

That water helped build Idaho agriculture, trout farming, geothermal heating, and eventually one of the most important nuclear research sites in the world.

And in northern Idaho, ancient rocks hold one of the richest silver districts ever discovered.

In this video, we break down 25 incredible facts about Idaho’s geography, geology, resources, energy, agriculture, and hidden history.

We cover:

• The Yellowstone hotspot
• The Snake River Plain
• Idaho’s ancient supereruptions
• Basalt lava fields
• The Eastern Snake River Plain Aquifer
• Thousand Springs
• Idaho trout farming
• Boise geothermal heating
• Craters of the Moon
• The Bonneville Flood
• Glacial Lake Missoula
• Precambrian rocks in northern Idaho
• Coeur d’Alene silver
• Idaho star garnets
• Idaho potato farming
• Snake River irrigation
• Water-right conflicts
• Hells Canyon
• Frank Church Wilderness
• Idaho hydropower
• Idaho National Laboratory
• Experimental Breeder Reactor I
• Arco and nuclear power
• The SL-1 accident
• America’s largest concentration of reactor research

One of the strangest facts is that the Snake River Plain is basically the old path of Yellowstone.

As North America moved southwest over a relatively stationary mantle plume, massive volcanic centers formed one after another across southern Idaho.

The farther west you go, the older the volcanic system becomes.

Yellowstone sits at the youngest end of the track today.

Then the eruptions covered the plain in basalt.

That basalt cooled full of fractures, bubbles, and broken surfaces.

Stack enough lava flows together and you create an enormous underground plumbing system.

That is the Eastern Snake River Plain Aquifer, one of the most permeable aquifers in the United States.

Where the aquifer meets the Snake River Canyon, water pours directly out of the cliffs at places like Thousand Springs.

The water stays cold and remarkably consistent year-round.

That helped make southern Idaho the center of America’s commercial rainbow trout industry.

The same volcanic heat also reaches Boise.

Hot groundwater has been used for district heating there since the 1800s, and even Idaho’s state capitol is heated geothermally.

And Idaho’s strange geology does not stop there.

The state was affected by two enormous Ice Age flood systems.

The Bonneville Flood ripped through southern Idaho.

Meanwhile, repeated failures of an ice dam in northern Idaho released Glacial Lake Missoula and helped carve the Channeled Scablands farther west.

Then there is the mineral wealth.

The Coeur d’Alene district became one of the richest silver-producing regions ever discovered, producing well over a billion ounces of silver through its history.

Idaho also produces rare star garnets, helping explain why it is known as the Gem State.

But one of Idaho’s most important contributions happened on an empty lava plain in 1951.

At Experimental Breeder Reactor I, nuclear energy generated usable electricity for the first time, initially lighting four bulbs.

A few years later, Arco became the first town to receive its entire electrical supply from nuclear power, briefly, as part of a demonstration.

Idaho is not just sitting on valuable land.

It is sitting on a geological system that created water, farmland, minerals, energy, and the empty space needed for some of the most important scientific experiments of the modern era.