North Idaho road trips just got a lot more informative.
The Idaho Transportation Department, Visit Idaho and the Idaho State Historical Society are updating all 300-ish of the state’s historical highway markers, plus creating about 100 more. They started collaborating on the project in the late 2010s.
The new signs add stories from the 20th century, plus fill historical gaps that left certain groups underrepresented—like Indigenous people, women, and immigrants.
Keith Petersen is the retired Idaho State Historian, but he came back to work as a contractor on a project that means a lot to him.
“I think the stories that we're telling are stories that are important," he said. "These are stories that Idahoans can be very proud of.”
The five northernmost counties in Idaho were the first to get their updated signs.
Now, if you pull to the shoulder of Highway 95 near Athol, you can now learn about Gladys Buroker—a female aviator who trained World War II pilots and helped transition the Henley Aerodome into Silverwood Theme Park.
“One of the things I found right away is about 85% of the existing markers dealt with the 19th century," Petersen said. "All that's good stuff, but it was sort of like Idaho really didn't exist after 1900. So there were big gaps chronologically. There were also lots of gaps—like, there were three markers statewide devoted to women.”
Other markers now have more information about Chinese railroad workers, an all-Black Infantry regiment, submarine training, lake restoration efforts, Idaho’s oldest Jesuit mission, and multiple Indigenous tribes.
The markers use the same unique font that was created for them in 1956.
That meant Petersen and his colleagues had to put in extra effort to display the correct spellings of Indigenous words that often use different characters than English.
"So far, they've been able to match the typeface to all the words from the three northern tribes that we've had,” he said.
The project will keep moving south. It’s scheduled to put up the last marker by the end of June 2027.
