Representative Gracie Bowers Pfost

Gracie Bowers Pfost (March 12, 1906 – August 11, 1965) was the first woman to represent Idaho in the United States Congress, serving five consecutive terms as a Democrat in the House of Representatives. A member of the Democratic Party, she represented Idaho’s 1st congressional district from January 3, 1953, to January 3, 1963, and contributed actively to the legislative process during a significant period in mid-twentieth-century American history.

Pfost was born in an Ozark Mountain log cabin in Harrison, Arkansas, on March 12, 1906. When she was five years old, in 1911, her parents moved the family to a farm near Boise, Idaho. One of five siblings, she grew up in a rural environment in the Boise Valley and attended local schools, including Meridian High School. Economic circumstances led her to leave high school at age sixteen in 1922, and she soon entered the workforce to help support herself and her family.

After leaving school, Pfost worked as a milk analyst at a dairy in Nampa, Idaho. In 1923 she married her supervisor at the dairy, Jack Pfost, who was more than twice her age. Determined to improve her skills and prospects, she pursued further education in business and completed her studies at Link’s Business College in Boise in 1929. Her business training and early work experience provided the foundation for a long career in public administration and politics.

Pfost’s public career began in Canyon County, Idaho, where she entered local politics and county government in 1929. Over the next two decades, from 1929 to 1951, she held a series of county offices, including deputy county clerk, auditor, recorder of deeds, and county treasurer. These positions gave her extensive experience in public finance, recordkeeping, and local administration. At the state and national party level, she became an increasingly prominent Democrat and served as an Idaho delegate to every Democratic National Convention from 1944 through 1960, helping to shape party affairs and policy discussions.

Pfost first sought national office in 1950, when she ran for the U.S. House of Representatives. She won the Democratic nomination that year over Harry Wall of Lewiston but narrowly lost in the general election to the Republican incumbent, John Travers Wood, a physician from Coeur d’Alene. Undeterred, she ran again in 1952. That year she defeated former eight-term Congressman Compton White Sr. of Clark Fork in the Democratic primary and then unseated Wood in another close general election, winning the seat for Idaho’s 1st congressional district. She was subsequently reelected to the House in 1954, 1956, 1958, and 1960, serving a total of five terms from 1953 to 1963. During her tenure she was regarded as a moderately liberal Democrat and became known nationally as the “Hell’s Belle” of Congress, a nickname she earned in her first year in office for her vigorous advocacy of a large federal dam on the Snake River in Hells Canyon. After prolonged debate, the single high federal dam she championed was not approved; instead, the project area was ultimately developed as a three-dam complex—Brownlee, Oxbow, and Hells Canyon—constructed by the private utility Idaho Power. Throughout her decade in Congress, Pfost participated fully in the democratic process and represented the interests of her Idaho constituents during a period marked by Cold War tensions, domestic economic growth, and evolving federal policy in the American West.

Although her House seat was considered secure, Pfost sought higher office following the death of U.S. Senator Henry Dworshak in July 1962. She chose not to run for reelection to the House and instead became the Democratic nominee in the special election for Dworshak’s U.S. Senate seat. In the November 1962 contest she was narrowly defeated, 51 percent to 49 percent, by the appointed Republican incumbent, former Governor Len Jordan, despite fellow Democrat Frank Church winning reelection the same year to Idaho’s other Senate seat. The election occurred shortly after the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, a moment of heightened national security concerns. Pfost’s decision to run for the Senate opened her House seat, which was won by six points by Democrat Compton White Jr. of Clark Fork, the 41-year-old son and namesake of the late eight-term congressman she had earlier defeated. In that same election, Idaho’s other House seat was retained by 33-year-old Democrat Ralph Harding of Blackfoot, and 38-year-old Democrat Frank Church of Boise secured a second term in the U.S. Senate. Dworshak’s former Senate seat, earlier held for more than three decades by William E. Borah, has since remained continuously in Republican hands, and Idaho has yet to elect a woman to the U.S. Senate.

After leaving the House in January 1963, Pfost remained in Washington, D.C., and continued her public service at the federal level. She joined the Federal Housing Administration as a special assistant on housing for the elderly, focusing on policies and programs to address the needs of older Americans in securing adequate and affordable housing. Her work in this role extended her long-standing interest in social welfare and public administration beyond her years in elective office.

Pfost’s later years were marked by declining health. She was hospitalized in Washington with pneumonia in October (shortly after leaving Congress) and was subsequently treated at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. Later diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease, she was admitted to Johns Hopkins several times in 1965. She died there on August 11, 1965, at the age of 59. Her husband, Jack Pfost, had died of a heart attack four years earlier, during her final term in Congress, collapsing at her Washington office. The couple had no children. Gracie Bowers Pfost and her husband are buried at Meridian Cemetery in Meridian, Idaho, leaving a legacy as trailblazers in Idaho politics and as participants in the broader history of women in the United States House of Representatives.