Lafayette Cartee is a famous figure in Idaho history, but we often forget that he had an impressive history before he ever set foot in Idaho territory.
Born in Pennsylvania, he was a self-educated man who became an engineer, a surveyor, a horticulturist, and a politician. Cartee came to Oregon Territory in 1849. The territory needed surveyors more than any other profession there in the early years. All that land that brought Oregon Trail pioneers to the Northwest had to be surveyed to establish ownership. Cartee was much in demand, and apparently a popular figure. He served as a delegate to the Oregon territorial legislature for two terms, one as speaker of the house.
Cartee and his wife, Mary, who was also from Pennsylvania, had three daughters and a son. Shortly after Lafayette Cartee completed Oregon’s first railroad, his wife passed away.
So, when he and his family moved to Boise in 1863, knowing that the new Idaho territory would need surveyors, he was a widower with four children. He would never remarry.
It was as a surveyor that he made his mark on Idaho history. President Andrew Johnson appointed him to be Idaho’s Surveyor General in 1867.
That was the year he left his indelible mark on Idaho.
Surveyors have to start somewhere. Lafayette Cartee picked a small butte about 20 miles from Boise City and five miles from the Snake River for his survey’s initial point. From that point, a longitudinal line running south to the southern border of Idaho and north to the Canadian border, would become known as the Boise Meridian. It is commonly referenced on deeds all over the state, perhaps confusing some property owners briefly about how they ended up with property in Boise and/or Meridian.
So why did Cartee pick Initial Point butte? It doesn’t exactly tower over the terrain, rising only 365 feet above the desert floor.
The butte isn’t a particularly prominent specimen, but it was in the right place. The General Land Office instructed the Surveyor General to locate the initial point of survey on a conspicuous mountain or at the confluence of streams. But the north-south line had to go through to the borders uninterpreted by another state. That was a real constraint, as we’ll see in a minute. It also needed to be near where actual settlement was taking place and extend through Idaho’s mining regions. Boise fit the bill for settlement, and there were mining regions at Silver City and Idaho City in the south and the Silver Valley in the north.
But Carttee’s real constraint was the shape of the state of Idaho. The western border follows the Snake River from about Parma to Lewiston. That river bears back to the east in Hells Canyon between Lucile and Slate Creek. At that point, the western border of Idaho is only about two and a half miles from the Boise Meridian as it travels north. Meanwhile, in the panhandle, the Boise Meridian is only about 17 miles from the Montana border on the east. So that means Cartee only had a 19 ½ mile-wide corridor from north to south in which to put that critical line.
For a state 305 miles across at its widest part and 479 miles from the southern border to the border with Canada, that was a real constraint for Idaho’s surveyor general.
Born in Pennsylvania, he was a self-educated man who became an engineer, a surveyor, a horticulturist, and a politician. Cartee came to Oregon Territory in 1849. The territory needed surveyors more than any other profession there in the early years. All that land that brought Oregon Trail pioneers to the Northwest had to be surveyed to establish ownership. Cartee was much in demand, and apparently a popular figure. He served as a delegate to the Oregon territorial legislature for two terms, one as speaker of the house.
Cartee and his wife, Mary, who was also from Pennsylvania, had three daughters and a son. Shortly after Lafayette Cartee completed Oregon’s first railroad, his wife passed away.
So, when he and his family moved to Boise in 1863, knowing that the new Idaho territory would need surveyors, he was a widower with four children. He would never remarry.
It was as a surveyor that he made his mark on Idaho history. President Andrew Johnson appointed him to be Idaho’s Surveyor General in 1867.
That was the year he left his indelible mark on Idaho.
Surveyors have to start somewhere. Lafayette Cartee picked a small butte about 20 miles from Boise City and five miles from the Snake River for his survey’s initial point. From that point, a longitudinal line running south to the southern border of Idaho and north to the Canadian border, would become known as the Boise Meridian. It is commonly referenced on deeds all over the state, perhaps confusing some property owners briefly about how they ended up with property in Boise and/or Meridian.
So why did Cartee pick Initial Point butte? It doesn’t exactly tower over the terrain, rising only 365 feet above the desert floor.
The butte isn’t a particularly prominent specimen, but it was in the right place. The General Land Office instructed the Surveyor General to locate the initial point of survey on a conspicuous mountain or at the confluence of streams. But the north-south line had to go through to the borders uninterpreted by another state. That was a real constraint, as we’ll see in a minute. It also needed to be near where actual settlement was taking place and extend through Idaho’s mining regions. Boise fit the bill for settlement, and there were mining regions at Silver City and Idaho City in the south and the Silver Valley in the north.
But Carttee’s real constraint was the shape of the state of Idaho. The western border follows the Snake River from about Parma to Lewiston. That river bears back to the east in Hells Canyon between Lucile and Slate Creek. At that point, the western border of Idaho is only about two and a half miles from the Boise Meridian as it travels north. Meanwhile, in the panhandle, the Boise Meridian is only about 17 miles from the Montana border on the east. So that means Cartee only had a 19 ½ mile-wide corridor from north to south in which to put that critical line.
For a state 305 miles across at its widest part and 479 miles from the southern border to the border with Canada, that was a real constraint for Idaho’s surveyor general.
Lafayette Cartee. (2023, July 3). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lafayette_Cartee
The Idaho State Historical Society has several items related to Lafayette Cartee in their archives, including the Cartee canteen.
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