C. A. Bottolfsen, Idaho's Comeback Governor

This corner of central Idaho remembers Clarence A. Bottolfsen, a small-town newspaperman who became governor twice over. Born around eighteen ninety, Bottolfsen made his life in the desert town of Arco, where he took over the Arco Advertiser in nineteen ten and built it into one of Idaho's leading weekly papers.

He rose through state politics, served as speaker of the Idaho House, and chaired the state Republican Party. He was first elected governor in nineteen thirty-eight, lost the next election, then won the office back, becoming one of only two people in Idaho history to serve two non-consecutive terms as governor. The other was Cecil Andrus, decades later.

Bottolfsen led the state through the hard, anxious years of the early Second World War. A park in Arco bears his name today, honoring the editor from the high desert who twice carried Idaho's highest office.