David William Davis (23 April 1872-5 August 1959) was the Republican Governor of Idaho from 6 January 1919 to 1 January 1923, succeeding Moses Alexander and preceding Charles C. Moore.
Biography[]
David William Davis was born in Cardiff, Wales in 1872, and his family settled in Rippey, Iowa in 1875. Davis worked in the coal mines from the age of twelve before working in the mining company store in Dawson and serving in the US Navy in the Philippines during the Spanish-American War. Davis helped organize the First National Bank of American Falls in Idaho in 1907, and he promoted the town and its farm interests before serving in the State Senate from 1913 to 1915 and as Governor from 1919 to 1923. Davis established a veteran's welfare program and a teacher's pension system, initiated a road-building program, and unified the state's administrative agencies, and he left office in 1923 and continued banking in Boise. He served as Commissioner of the US Reclamation Service from 1923 to 1924 and as a special assistant to the Secretary of the Interior, and he died in 1959.