SOME NATURAL HISTORY.
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 shore-line gravel are left exposed one hundred feet
above the town; and a succession of low step-terraces of lake-shore
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 Snake 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 Palaeozic
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 springs.”
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, lend 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 outcroppings 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
shore-line 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.”