Nature is the
greatest of all historians. She is alike the most
accurate and interesting. Her pen is the impress of
time, and in characters more durable than the most
lasting creations of man, she has written the story of
the ages as they rolled slowly by. Impartial,
unprejudiced, and in this respect omniscient, she has
patiently and unerringly recorded a history more ancient
than that of primeval man, more valuable than that of
the proudest monarchy. And so, having in the previous
chapter traced Bannock County from an unlocated spot in
an unexplored desert to a settled and civilized
community of fixed limits, let us now examine the scene
of our story more closely, and try to read something of
what Nature has written there.
The sheltered canyon mouth in which our city is built
was once the bed of a huge lake, larger than many
present day seas. Fish and prehistoric water animals,
uncanny and awe-inspiring monsters, could we see them
today, once sought their prey where now our houses raise
their sheltering roofs. The benches that today are
advertised as desirable building sites, were at one time
the sloping shores of an inland sea. Could we but read
the romance of rock and soil in all its detail, surely
the most lurid fiction of man would pale by comparison.
The westernmost point of Bannock county is bounded by
the Snake River, far-famed for the beauty of its valley
and the rich gold deposits therein. The character of
these deposits has puzzled prospectors and miners for
many years, because unlike all other placer fields, it
maintains a uniform fineness and coloring from mouth to
source.
In the Engineering and Mining Journal for January 25,
1902, Mr. Robert Bell, a well known mining expert of
this state, published an article entitled: "The Origin
of the Fine Gold of Snake River." This article was
reprinted in the Pocatello Tribune, February 15. 1902,
from which we quote, in part:
"One of the most plausible theories that have been
suggested touching the origin of this extensive
distribution of the precious metal was advanced by
Captain N. L. Turner, a West Point man, who spent
considerable time investigating the problem in the early
eighties. Captain Turner advanced the theory that the
gold was originally held in solution by the waters of a
great inland sea or lake that occupied the Snake River
valley subsequent to the Miocene period and that the
gradual and repeated evaporation of this great body of
water by subsequent lava flows resulted in the
precipitation of its metallic contents, generally and
evenly over its basin area. This theory would seem to
account for the uniform size and quality of the golden
colors so generally disseminated throughout the enormous
acreage of fine gravel beds through which the Snake
River now courses.
"The geological record of the rocks left along the
borders of this stream offer conclusive evidence of a
landlocked body of water. This great body of water,
which might aptly be called Lake Idaho, was created by
the closing of the lower valley by a great dam of brown
Columbia lava, 6,500 feet high, now plainly exposed by
erosion."
The highest level of this lake was about 6,000 feet, and
its extent 500 miles in length from "Weiser to the foot
of the Rocky Mountain range, and 150 miles in width. Its
deepest point was over 4,000 feet.
Mr. Bell goes on to say: "This lake suffered numerous
and extensive variations of level during the Tertiary
period. Some of the more recent horizons are still
exposed at Pocatello, where on either side of the
Portneuf estuary, in plain sight from the depot, well
defined benches or terraces of shoreline gravel are left
exposed one hundred feet above the town; and a
succession of low step-terraces of lakeshore gravel, cut
by the main track of the Oregon Short Line railroad
between Pocatello and American Falls, plainly indicate
the rapid recession of the lake levels of this period,
and its final drainage and complete obliteration by the
erosion of the Shake river channel to its present level.
"Prior to the inception of the great floods of black
lava that have filled the upper valley (near Pocatello),
the shore lines and basin area of Lake Idaho were almost
all composed of granite and Palaeozoic formation. These
formations were rich in placer and quartz gold."
It is thought that the Snake River deposits also contain
some alloy of platinum or iridium.
But gold is not the only valuable mineral deposit in
Bannock County. Situated at the mouth of Sulphur canyon,
five miles east of the town of Soda Springs, is a group
of soda springs with associated deposits of native
sulphur. These mines were worked in the late nineties
and in the years 1901 and 1902 a considerable amount of
sulphur was taken from them, but the enterprise was
finally abandoned. The United States Geological Survey,
in Bulletin 470, gives the following summary of these
deposits:
"The failure of an apparently well backed attempt to
develop these deposits will render improbable any
further attempts in the immediate future. It is
extremely doubtful if the deposits can be profitably
worked in competition with the relatively high-grade
deposits of Wyoming and Utah."
The same bureau, in Part I of its publications for 1909,
speaks more hopefully of the salt deposits in Bannock
County. In an article on this subject, Carpel L. Breger
says:
"Valuable areas of salt-bearing land lie along the
"Wyoming-Idaho border in Bannock County, Idaho. In the
old days, before the advent of railroads in the west,
relatively large amounts of salt were boiled from the
brine springs in this region and were hauled by ox team
to supply Idaho and Montana mining camps. The emigrants
to the northwest along the Lander route also drew upon
this region for their salt. Indeed, some forty years
ago, in the reports of the Hayden survey, this area was
briefly described as containing the finest salt works
west of the Mississippi. In those days as much as
200,000 pounds of salt was boiled per month, selling in
the late sixties at $1.25 a hundred pounds at the
spring's."
Col. Lander, mentioned above, after whom a street in
Pocatello has been named, led a government expedition
through these parts in 1863, and F. V. Hayden, whose
name has been given to Hayden street, Pocatello,
conducted a United States geological and geographic
survey in this country in 1872.
"Since then, however, the area has decreased in
importance. The railroads have passed it by; other salt
works those of the Great Salt Lake region have taken its
markets on account of easier railroad connection.
"Interest in these salt deposits has recently been
revived, owing to the discovery of rock salt beneath
some brine springs. James Splawn and H. Hokanson, in
deepening these springs in 1902, encountered a formation
of rock salt six feet below the surface and this has
been penetrated for a thickness of twenty-six feet
without reaching the bottom. The exceptional purity of
the salt, its cheapness of production, and the
probability of railroad connections in the near future,
lends interest to the deposits of the entire district.
"As to quality, salt can be easily obtained here which
is above the average in chemical purity. This salt could
be produced most cheaply and with the maximum of
cleanliness by a process of solar evaporation.
"At present the market for the salt of the area
described is limited to the immediate vicinity. It
could, however, command the markets of eastern Idaho,
western Wyoming, and much of Montana.
The vicinity adjacent to Pocatello is rich in mineral
deposits, but most of them lie on the Indian reservation
upon which white men are not allowed to trespass. In his
"History of Idaho," Mr. Hiram T. French speaks as
follows of the mining resources of Bannock County:
"Many out croppings in the mountains near Pocatello give
promise of most fabulous richness. Many assays from the
rock have been made, and they run up into the thousands.
The agent in charge of the reservation, however, has
been strict in enforcing the treaty laws. In the summer
of 1893 a company of Pocatello men discovered a copper
ledge of marvelous promise, on Belle Marsh creek, on the
reservation, and made a determined effort to work it.
They put a force of men to work there and uncovered a
ledge for a distance of a hundred feet, finding a
well-defined ledge of wonderfully rich copper ore. They
worked it until twice warned off by the Indian agent,
and quit only when they were finally threatened with
arrest. During the same summer a strong company of
capitalists of Pocatello, Butte and Salt Lake City
organized and made an effort to secure a lease of the
mineral lands on the reservation; but other men in
Pocatello, who had been watching prospects and
opportunity for years, entered a protest and the
interior department at Washington refused to grant the
lease. The same year a Pocatello organization made an
attempt to obtain permission to develop mines on this
reservation, but failure likewise attended this only
when they were finally threatened with arrest. In 1891
some very rich galena was discovered about two miles
east of Pocatello, and this created a veritable stampede
of miners who began digging vigorously. The signs were
most encouraging, but the Indian agent again came to the
front and drove the men from the reservation. According
to the testimony of all the old timers in this region
there are many rich deposits of the respective valuable
minerals in nearly all the mountains of Bannock County.
Apparently there is enough of coal and asbestos deposit
here to make a whole community rich."
Pocatello 's railroad and ranching interests alone
insure the development of a prosperous and fair-sized
city, and in the immediate attention demanded by these
activities, the mining possibilities of the neighborhood
seem for the time to have fallen into the background.
The day will come, however, when the Indian reservation
will be thrown open, and when that day does come, a new
source of wealth will be released which might easily
place Pocatello well in the front rank of western
cities.
In the southeastern counties of Idaho there lies an
extensive shoreline of middle carboniferous limestones
and shales, which has been outlined by the United States
Geological Survey, and a very large portion of which is
contained in Bannock County. This in its entirety
composes the largest phosphate field in the world, the
rock phosphate of the deposit being seventy per cent
pure, in beds of from three to eight feet thick. In
December 1908, the secretary of the interior withdrew
from all kinds of entry 4,541,300 acres of land, part of
which extends over the Utah line, pending an examination
of their phosphate resources. During the summer of 1909,
the United States Geological Survey conducted field work
on this area, which resulted in the restoration of some
of these lands and the withdrawal of others. The total
area now withheld is 2,551,399 acres.
The rock phosphate deposits of Bannock County are
original sedimentary formations made when this part of
the earth was still under water. Since then other
rock-forming sediments have accumulated, so that
thousands of feet of subsequent strata have overlain
them. Deformation of the earth's surface has broken
these strata, which originally lay flat. Hence these
rock-phosphate deposits resemble coal and limestone,
rather than ore deposits, such as veins or lodes. No
entirely satisfactory explanation of their source or
manner of accumulation has yet been given.
The value of these deposits will be more readily
understood when it is known that prior to their
discovery the total known supply in the United States
was barely sufficient to last forty years. In addition
to this, most of the deposits were in the control of
European investors, which threatened to put the American
farmer at the mercy of foreign speculators.
In his book entitled, "The Conservation of Natural
Resources of the United States," Professor Van Hise, of
the University of Wisconsin, says: "The most fundamental
of the resources of this nation is the soil, which
produces our food and clothing, and one of the most
precious of the natural resources of America, having a
value inestimably greater than might be supposed from
the present market value, is our phosphate-rock
resources."
Phosphoric acid is essentially a soil fertilizer. It is
really nothing else than a rich manure, as the
odoriferous smell given off when two pieces are rubbed
together amply testifies. The enormous deposits of this
powerful fertilizer practically insure the agricultural
future of Idaho. The secretary of the interior, in a
recent report, said: "The present crop yields of the
virgin fields of the west under irrigation cannot be
expected to be maintained by irrigation water alone, and
the intensive methods of that region will within a few
years have to figure on artificial fertilizers to
maintain their great yield."
And Nature, foreseeing our future need, has provided for
it in advance.
The limestone deposits near Inkom are said to be
valuable for the manufacture of cement.
The agricultural soil of the county is composed largely
of disintegrated lava and volcanic ash, which, when
irrigated, is very fertile. The principal waterways are
the Portneuf, the Snake, and the Belle Marsh, which are
fed by many mountain tributaries.
The county contains 3,179 square miles.
Having now determined in our first chapter the
geographical location and early history of Bannock
County, and in our second examined the nature of the
country and what resources it contains, we will in the
third chapter turn our attention to its first
inhabitants, and consider the case of our brother, "the
noble Indian."
The History of Bannock County
Idaho, By Arthur C. Saunders, Pocatello, Idaho. U. S.
A., The Tribune Company. Limited, 1915
History of
Bannock County, Idaho
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