Idaho’s Harriman State Park could be lost if this bill becomes law | Opinion
Harriman State Park, located in the northeastern corner of the state about an hour outside Yellowstone National Park, is one of the gems of Idaho’s state park system.
The center of an almost-12,000-acre wildlife refuge that hosts massive herds of elk, Harriman is home to among the best fly-fishing in Idaho — which means, in the world. Miles of the Henrys Fork of the Snake River, which wells up out of the ground at a massive spring a bit farther up the caldera, run through the park. People travel from around the world to fish famous locations like Millionaire’s Pool, driving a vibrant local guiding industry.
And a bill that has already passed the Idaho Senate risks losing it all.
The park was once a sprawling vacation ranch owned by the railroad magnate Harriman family and friends like the Guggenheims. It was gifted to the state of Idaho as a state park through an agreement signed by Gov. Robert Smylie in the early 1960s, and opened to the public in the 1980s.
Idaho didn’t even have a state parks department at the time, and the Harriman gift agreement was what spurred the state to create one.
An important part of the agreement was that the park be managed by a professional park service that abides by a merit-based system. Since that time, the director of Idaho Parks and Recreation has been appointed by the state parks board, rather than the governor. And many fear Senate Bill 1300, which would make the director of Parks and Recreation a political appointee, would violate that agreement, resulting in the return of the land to the Harriman family.
This is not the first time the issue has arisen, but it’s the first time a bill like this has managed to move this far. A similar bill was pulled off the floor in 2018 after reporting by Rocky Barker and Cynthia Sewell in the Statesman highlighted the risk of losing the park.
S1300 cleared the Senate floor in a 21-14 vote last week.
A prior attorney general’s opinion gives credence to those fears.
“A director appointed by the governor would be required to operate under the direction of the board, but for employment purposes be directly answerable to the governor,” Deputy Attorney General Brian Kane wrote, according to past Statesman reporting. “The legal reality of this change would be to take a position that is currently politically insulated and make it intensely political, particularly in the event the director must answer to divergent policy choices of the board and the governor.”
While Kane’s opinion did leave open the possibility that an appointment made solely on the basis of merit would not violate the terms of the agreement, at the very least, if this bill becomes law it will involve the state in years of costly litigation.
A letter sent from some Harriman descendants to the state from Hawley Troxell, published by Friends of Harriman State Park, indicates at least some of them have already retained top-flight counsel. And while the intent of that letter appears to be to convince the Legislature not to take action that risks the park, there are lots of Harriman descendants, and not all may have the same preferences.
The land where Harriman State Park now resides, in an area where tiny homes with barely any land list in the neighborhood of $500,000, would be a gold mine for anyone willing to subdivide and sell it off. That’s going to be a powerful lure for lawsuits attempting to reassert a family claim on the land from anyone who can trace their ancestry to the Harriman family.
And it isn’t a one-time risk, but one Idaho would live with indefinitely.
Imagine the gubernatorial appointment system in practice.
Every time a new director is appointed, it will be an opportunity to raise the question: Was this particular appointment merit-based or political? And if the answer is ever that it was political, then there’s a potential violation of the agreement. So expect a new raft of lawsuits every time a new director is appointed.
That’s a terrible risk to take because there are no major problems arising from the current system of appointing a director. When it is ever a problem to have more professionals and fewer political hacks in the room?
Why not leave well enough alone?
Bryan Clark is an opinion writer for the Idaho Statesman.
This story was originally published March 9, 2026 at 4:00 AM.