Shoshone County certainly was one of the really large counties in the United States when, in anticipation of the Clearwater gold rush, the Washington legislature decided that local government ought to be provided for the new mining camps. Created by act of January 9, 1861, Shoshone County included all of Washington south and east of the future site of Lewiston, which after May 13, 1861, grew rapidly into an important mining supply center. This was a large domain.
Yet the only town in all that vast tract was the new Mormon community of Franklin, which had been established April 14, 1860, in Cache Valley about 20 miles north of Logan, Utah. No one had thought that the only white residents of Shoshone County were the Cache Valley Mormons; but the original Shoshone County boundary left Pierce, the county seat (along with all the intended white inhabitants), in Spokane County, Washington.
But with the gold rush, Lewiston, Elk City, Newsome, and Florence sprang up within a year. Thousands of miners came in, and the Washington election, July 8, 1861, Shoshone County cast the largest vote in the territory--even though the voters (mostly around Pierce) did not live in the county. That mistake was corrected by new legislation, December 20, 1861, establishing Nez Perce and Idaho counties for the newer mines and moving Shoshone County northward to include Pierce and the mines that were supposed to have made up Shoshone County in the first place - State Historian Merle Wells
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