Jim Kershner’s this day in history

From our archives, 100 years ago

The Washington state Senate was considering a startling proposal: to create the new state of Lincoln, encompassing all of Eastern Washington east of the Cascades and the panhandle counties of North Idaho.

The proposal was unlikely to pass, but The Spokesman-Review noted that the idea had “taken a tenacious grip on public interest and favor.” It had, in fact, been proposed for nearly half a century.

As an S-R editorial pointed out, “Idaho and Washington are geographically illogical,” both states being divided in half. The eastern and western parts of Washington were divided by the Cascades, and the northern and southern parts of Idaho were divided by the “wild and formidable” Rockies. A union of Eastern Washington and North Idaho had more geographic logic. “The idea survives with amazing vitality, and the time yet may come when growth of population and development will join force with identity of interest and geographical considerations to add another star to the flag of the Union and bestow upon it the revered name of Lincoln.”

From the fugitive beat: A Spokane officer who went to Boulder, Montana, to take murder suspect Preston Thayer into custody, discovered it wasn’t him.

Boulder authorities had informed Spokane authorities that the man was “lame like Thayer.” As it turned out, the man in Boulder had simply “worn the skin off his heel by an ill-fitting shoe.”