Post Contact History
Cultural Resources at INL
Fur trappers and early exploration (1900's-1920's)
The fur trade marks the first time Euro-Americans went west of the Rocky Mountains for business ventures starting an age of exploration and Euro-American Imperialism in the region. From 1811-1856 trappers traversed the Snake River country in search of beaver. The Eastern Snake River Plain during this period was contested between Great Britain and the United States as both nations establish a permeant presence on the plain and slowly eroded the holdings of Native Americans. The Hudson Bay Company controlled most of the trade on the Snake River plain during this period and experienced only some competition from American trappers. Most American business ventures in the area failed during the mid-1820’s to the mid 1830’s, the peak of the fur trade. Each spring and fall would see several competing companies of trappers traversing the land oftentimes spending the winter on the Snake River. The introduction of fur trade into Eastern Idaho altered the subsistence strategies for some Native American tribes who both supported and opposed the trappers intrusion into the territory. 1811-1845 was a key transitional period for the Eastern Snake River plain as Euro-Americans exploited, explored, and opened the area for latter emigrant and westward expansion.
The land on the INL and Eastern Snake River Plain by extension came into contact with the fur trade by necessity. Only some of the creeks and rivers on the Snake River Plain were trapped as the majority of beaver was found in the frigid creeks which encompassed the Snake River Plain. However, to get to these locations trappers had to navigate the plain and the Snake River at its center. The easiest method to cross the vast deserted basalt plain was through the lands now managed by the INL. As trappers traveled between the Salmon River country or farther west and the mountains on the eastern side of the plain it was necessary to cross at two locations. The first route was between the river valleys of the Big Lost River, Little Lost River, and uncommonly Birch Creek and Fort Hall with Big Southern Butte and the Big Lost River at the center. The second route was between the same northern river valleys and Henry’s Fork with Camas Creek in the middle. Both routes traversed INL lands and fur trappers often stopped along the banks of the Big Lost River to camp.
On the Eastern Snake River Plain, as with the rest of the Snake country, the fur trade peaked in the mid 1830’s and left a stark visual description record of an inhospitable landscape fur trappers learned to navigate and survive in. This knowledge was useful in establishing the geography, routes, and sustainability of the area for later Americans.
Western Expansion Oregon Trail and Goodale's Cutoff (1840's-1880's)
Goodale’s Cutoff
After more than ten years travelling across southern Idaho on the Oregon Trail, emigrant wagon trains began to take a new route in 1852. Instead of journeying along the trail south of the Snake River, the wagons headed north from Fort Hall for a cutoff to Big Southern Butte and the Big Lost River on the present-day Idaho National Laboratory (INL) Site. Turning west, the trail took the emigrants along the northern edge of Craters of the Moon National Monument and Preserve and onto the Camas Prairie, rejoining the old Oregon Trail near Mountain Home.
The emigrant trail followed a seasonal migration across the Snake River Plain used by the Northern Shoshone to reach the Camas Prairie. Explorers and fur trappers began to use the route in the early 1800s. By 1854, John Jeffrey was promoting the trail to emigrants, along with his toll-ferry across the Snake River. Few travelled the cutoff until gold was discovered in Idaho in the early 1860s when Timothy Goodale reopened the cutoff to emigrants and miners. With success of the gold mines, the route became an important part of a transportation network across southern Idaho, supporting communication, commerce, and settlement in the state before the arrival of the railroad and later highways replaced the trail.
After crossing the Snake River to reach Goodale’s Cutoff, emigrants faced the most challenging section of the trail. With no water along the 40-mile trail across the desert, Webb Spring on the north side of Big Southern Butte was the closest source and an important landmark for emigrants. When water was scarce at the butte, the wagon trains travelled across the present day Idaho National Laboratory (INL) Site to the Big Lost River. Many emigrants found relief at the river, but not all. In late summer wagon trains sometimes found the Big Lost River dry at first sight and their journey continued upstream until the river ran again. By the 1880s, stage service along the route to Big Southern Butte included an improved road and a stage station but the journey was still unpleasant for emigrants and stage coaches.
Emigrants wrote about their experiences in diaries and journals as they travelled the overland trails and Goodale’s Cutoff. They recorded the hardships of the journey over the desert to water but also their impressions of the unfamiliar volcanic landscape they encountered crossing the INL. The diaries and journals recall familiar day-to-day activities like cooking and cleaning on the trail and many documented the loss of loved ones during the journey west.
Homesteading and agriculture
While the northern portion of what is now INL was used primarily by ranchers, the western and northeastern portions were geared toward homesteading and agriculture. Most of the homesteaders arriving in the late 1800s settled along the Big Lost River. The first permanent settlers arrived in 1878, and the first official water right claim was recorded in 1879. Many settlers were prompted to move into the area by the Homestead Act of 1862, which allowed the head of a family to obtain 160 acres by meeting certain criteria, such as residing on the land and cultivating it for a period of five consecutive years. The Desert Land Act of 1877 also encouraged settlement in the Big Lost River area by permitting families to acquire 640 acres if water could be brought to it. Water was a rare commodity in the desert areas of the eastern Snake River Plain, and the successful farming in the area hinged on the homesteaders’ ability to obtain it. With passage of the Carey Land Act in 1894 and the Desert Reclamation Act in 1902, the federal government assisted homesteaders in this endeavor. The 1894 act set aside 1 million acres of public land in Idaho for homesteading, provided the settlers participate in state-sponsored irrigation projects. The 1902 act provided the funding necessary to reclaim these arid and semi-arid acres. Southeastern Idaho greatly benefited from this federal aid and from 1905 to 1920 saw a dramatic upswing in agricultural activity on land within and around INL’s present-day boundaries. Idaho Falls’ population quadrupled from approximately 1,262 in 1900 to 4,827 in 1910. This growth stemmed from the promise of irrigable land. Irrigation companies formed, and with financial backing by the federal government, built several dams, including the Mackay Dam on the Big Lost River upstream of INL, and canal projects that brought much-needed water to homesteaders. The town of Powell — later named Pioneer — sprang up along the Oregon Short Line Railroad in the southwestern portion of the present-day INL site to supply locals with necessary mercantile goods and serve as a stock-shipping station. Unfortunately, gross miscalculations of precipitation and water flow in the area, coupled with ignorance of the fractured bedrock strata and porous gravels of the Big Lost River, led to the failure and abandonment of most of these projects in the 1920s. Many of the small homesteads on and around present-day INL closed, although a few notable exceptions in the Mud Lake area to the east and far upstream in the Big Lost River Valley flourished. Many of the historic sites located within INL boundaries represent these short-lived efforts to reclaim the high desert for agricultural purposes.Idaho Statehood
Mining and Transportation
In the 1860s through the 1880s, discoveries of gold and other precious metals in central Idaho brought many miners, and boomtowns sprung up in areas north and west of present-day INL boundaries. These mid- to late-1800s mining booms created a need for transportation systems between the newly established mining towns north of INL, such as Mackay and Leadore, and their supply stations in older towns, such as Idaho Falls to the east and Blackfoot to the south. Freighting and staging became a major business, and several companies formed to meet the demand for mining equipment, passenger service, dry goods and other supplies. Old wagon roads and trails became stage and freight lines virtually overnight, and several new trails formed across the desert. Because of the freshwater springs that bubble from its slopes within the otherwise dry desert, the Big Southern Butte served as a stop for nearly all stage, freight and later rail lines. Charles Berryman and George Rogers, Joe Skelton, and Henry Leatherman, three of the earliest freighters to cross the desert from Idaho Falls and Blackfoot to Arco, all used the Big Southern Butte as a way station. In the 1890s, another way station was established along the banks of the Big Lost River, approximately two miles north of INL’s Radioactive Waste Management Complex. This station, known as the Powell Stage Station, sat along a route parallel and several miles to the north of Goodale’s Cutoff. George W. Powell, the station’s proprietor, constructed a rock building with a store and post office. Powell maintained the only known bridge crossing of the Big Lost River in the area. A second stage station, the Birch Creek Stage Station, was at the north end of INL, along the banks of Birch Creek. Established as early as 1884, it was a stopover for travelers and freighters bound for the mining camps in the Birch Creek and Salmon River valleys. In 1901, completion of the Oregon Short Line Railroad between Blackfoot and Arco signaled the end of stage and freight lines in the area. Many of the mining boom towns of the mid to late 1800s folded when expectations of productivity in the surrounding mines were not realized. One last minor boom occurred in 1925, when gold was discovered in the Lost River sinks. However, the gold was in such minute quantities that extraction was economically infeasible. As transportation through the desert became more reliable, settlers arrived. Many began ranching in the northern reaches of present-day INL. By the early 1900s, sheep were common in the area and are still moved from pastures near the Big Southern Butte across the INL area to Howe. Many of the isolated historic sites encountered within INL’s boundaries are remnants of the small, temporary camps created by sheep and cattle drovers as they moved their stock through the region around the end of the 19th century.Naval proving grounds
In 1942, the U.S. Navy established a presence on what is now INL to test naval ordnance.
During World War II, the U.S. Naval Ordnance Plant was established in Pocatello, Idaho, as a place to manufacture, assemble and reline Navy weapons. Nearly all the naval ship guns used by the Pacific Fleet were eventually sent to the plant for relining. Before the guns could be returned for active duty, they had to be test fired. The Arco Naval Proving Ground (NPG) was established 60 miles northwest of Pocatello as a remote place to test the guns for combat readiness. It was one of only six such facilities in the U.S. and the only one capable of test firing the Pacific Fleet’s 16-inch battleship guns.
The Arco NPG included 270 square miles of land and infrastructure, including operational support facilities and housing for military and civilian personnel. This infrastructure is primarily located at INL’s present-day Central Facilities Area (CFA), but also included rail lines and roads for gun transport and downrange activities and various targets, spotting towers, and detonation areas. The Army Air Corps, flying out of Pocatello, established two practice bombing ranges near the Arco NPG, one located southwest of CFA and the other southeast.
After World War II, ordnance testing at the Arco NPG continued in the form of explosives storage and transportation tests. Structures were built and loaded with explosives that were intentionally discharged to test the effects on the structures and surrounding area to determine safe storage of military ordnance. On August 29, 1945, 250,000 pounds of TNT were detonated. The explosion created a mile high smoke and dust cloud and a crater 15 feet deep. Another test on October 31, 1946, detonated 500,000 pounds of excess high explosives to determine the safe distance for explosive ordnance storage in the open. At the time, this was believed to be the world’s largest conventional ordnance explosion. Debris from this and other ordnance tests remain on the INL landscape.
Between 1968 and 1970, during the Vietnam War, shots from massive 16-inch naval guns again rang through the Idaho desert. A naval firing site, located southwest of CFA, housed testing of the battleship New Jersey’s armament. Since Atomic Energy Commission research facilities were scattered throughout the original downrange area of the Arco NPG, the guns tested at that time were aimed in the opposite direction. From the firing site located a few miles south of CFA, the guns were aimed southward across uninhabited territory toward the Big Southern Butte. Craters still lie on the butte’s northern flank.
In 1949, the Atomic Energy Commission designated 890 square miles of the Arco as the National Reactor Testing Station, which is now INL. Since 1949, 52 reactors have been built and tested on the site. More information can be found on the INL History Page: https://inl.gov/history/
