It's bad enough, really that Americans have and almost willful ignorance of the geography and culture of other countries, but their thoughtless misconceptions about place within their own borders is especially difficult to understand. Granted, the United States in many ways resembles a collection of little countries than one big one, but as lame excuses for blindly accepting simplistic stereotypes go, that one is Tin Tim without his crutches. And so when a fellow American runs into an Idaho native and, upon discovering where they hail from, immediately brings up a certain tuber, it's understandable if the Idahoan in question heaves, at the very least, a heavy sigh. Well let's talk about Idaho and potatoes then. Let's take a good look at the subject and maybe, just maybe, put it to bed for good. Idaho does grow potatoes, after all, lots of them, and it isn't as if the farmers aren't justifiably proud of them. Let's put aside, for the moment, the rugged mountains, the rolling plains, the countless natural wonders of the Great American West that Idaho contains, and speak of potatoes one more (hopefully final) time. Presbyterian minister Henry Spalding is credited with planting the 1st potatoes in Idaho in 1837. Spalding was a missionary bringing religion and agriculture to the Nez Perce tribes in Northern Idaho, who were beginning to suffer from the depletion of their most important natural resource, Bison, caused by American hunters. His 15-acre plot yielding a number of successful harvests, some of which he sold to western-bound wagon trains (it's unknown whether or not this encouraged the settlers to ease up on the Buffalo). The conditions in Idaho proved to be ideal for potato farming. Bigger yields of bigger potatoes followed year after year. Eventually the former American potato capitol, Maine, found itself supplanted by the western spud wonder state. Today enormous corporations like Ore-Ida and various fast-food restaurants (think of all those french-fries) buy nearly the entire potato yield of the state of Idaho. Ironically most Idahoans end up eating potatoes that have made their way throughout the transcontinental US food industry before making their way back to the state where they were grown. And so potatoes and Idaho became inextricably linked. Tall tales and manufactured folk lore about the size of Idaho potatoes abound. One Idaho farmers' joke goes "A greenhorn tired to buy 100 lbs of potato from me the other day, but I told him, 'I don't cut up my potatoes! You buy the whole potato or you take your business elsewhere!'" For every Idahoan that's sick to death of hearing about potatoes there's another who embraced the state's tuber-specific identity. Blackfoot, Idaho, a town guarded by the friendly totem King Spud, is the site of the World Potato Exposition, where visitors can learn all about potatoes and the potato industry. The Expo also features the World's Largest Styrofoam Potato, which is admittedly pretty darn big (though to be honest there isn't a lot of competition in that category). And that's it, basically. That is what all the fuss is about. But Idaho's main agricultural crop can hardly compete with Hell's Canyon, the deepest Gorge in North America, or the mighty Salmon River, called the "River of No Return", can it? There's so much that is interesting about this great western state that you don't need butter and chives to enjoy. So the next time you meet a person from Idaho, surprise them. Ask them about the 7 Devils or the Craters of the Moon National Monument. Or at the very least ask them about sugar beets. They grow those, too. |
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