Fort Hall
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Nathaniel J.
Wyeth, a New England ice merchant, decided to go into the fur trade.
In 1834 he established Fort Hall near what is today Pocatello, Idaho.
Things did not go well. Wyeth returned home in 1836 and sold his
fort to the Hudson's Bay Company. Travelers rested at the fort and
got new supplies when they were available.
The trail north
from the Bear River to the Portneuf River, which would take travelers
to Fort Hall, was difficult, but by now the road-hardened travelers
handled it routinely. Nine or ten days travel brought them to Fort
Hall -- that remarkable outpost of Yankee entrepreneurship in the
wilderness.
The fort was
abandoned in 1855, but emigrants continued to camp in the abandoned
buildings and graze stock in the pastures until 1863. That year,
extraordinary floods swept away even the remains.
The original
site of Fort Hall is on private property today, but a replica has
been built in the city of Pocatello where visitors may see how the
original fort looked.
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Last modified on:
January 31, 2004
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