Border Battles: Should Part of Oregon Join Idaho?

There is a petition circulating in Wallowa County right now which would relieve the county commissioners of an obligatory two meetings per year to consider the advisability of moving Oregon’s state border to make us—and several other Oregon counties—part of Idaho. I’m told we need about 280 signatures to get it to the ballot, and organizers say they want 500 to make sure it does.

This should not be a great problem, as the first time around, when several Eastern Oregon counties overwhelmingly supported the measure, it passed in Wallowa County by a mere seven votes. I don’t know how the required meetings have gone in other places, but there has been no big hubbub about them here, and my guess is that more opponents than supporters of this border change have showed up for the meetings.

But it raises the question of borders. And right now, there is talk of expanding our national borders to include Greenland. That’s a different kettle of fish, you say, yet in my brief lifetime we’ve added two states (Hawaii and Alaska) and turned down statehood for Puerto Rico.

They were already territories, I know, but they had not been our territories forever, and there was opposition as well as support for Hawaii, Alaska, and Puerto Rico becoming first US territories, and then US states. The staters won in Alaska and Hawaii, lost in Puerto Rico.

https://www.postalley.org/2026/01/25/border-battles-should-parts-of-oregon-join-idaho/?mc_cid=2089c97138&mc_eid=a0c4847065