And Why Are Idaho’s Wheat Crops the Best?

Story and Photos by Max Jenkins

My dad, Wes Jenkins, was known as a character in Idaho County. He loved kidding his many friends, and they loved kidding him back. For shock value, sometimes Dad would make outlandish claims to get the joking-around started. 

He often repeated one claim Mom and I thought was more outlandish than the others. 

“The Camas Prairie and the Palouse Hills are the best dryland [non-irrigated] wheat- growing areas in the world,” he’d say. “Yes, in the whole world!” 

His Camas Prairie farmer friends ate it up. 

Mom and I shook our heads and said, “Yeah, there he goes again.”

In 1946, Dad was appointed county agent for Idaho County, the state’s largest county.  Two years later, Leonard B. Jordan asked him to be his partner in purchasing a Ford-Mercury franchise in Grangeville.  Len, as he preferred to be called, was elected governor in October 1950 and was a U.S. Senator for ten years.  Dad owned and ran Jordan Motors for the next three decades.