POCATELLO, a city of south-eastern Idaho, U.S.A., on the Portneuf river, at an altitude of 4,46o ft., 176 m. S. by W. of Yel lowstone National Park; the county seat of Bannock county and the second city of the State in size. It is on Federal highways 30N and 91 and the Oregon Short Line of the Union Pacific rail way system; and has a municipal airport and station for the air mail service. Pop. (192o) 15,001-82% native white-16,471 in 193o by the Federal census. Beyond the Snake river (15 m. distant) to the north and west stretches the Snake river lava plain of 20,000 sq.m. American Falls (pop. in 1920, 23 m. W. of Pocatello, is the centre of a great hydro-electric power and irrigation project. Pocatello has extensive railroad shops, large wholesale houses and a variety of manufacturing establishments (including cheese factories with a world-wide market) with an output valued in 1927 at $5,765,879. It is the seat of the southern branch of the State university, which duplicates the first two years of the curriculum offered at Moscow. Seven miles north is
the Ft. Hall Indian Reservation, and within its limits is the site of old Ft. Hall, built in 1834 at the intersection of the Missouri Oregon and the Utah-Canada trails. The early history of this region, when the overland stage made its way through the Port neuf valley, was full of episodes with Indians and highwaymen. At Massacre Rocks, 38 m. S.W. of Pocatello, an emigrant train was annihilated by Indians in Aug. 1862. The city is built on 2,000 ac. sold by the Indians to the United States. It began as a tent colony in 1882, when the railroad was completed to this point, and was incorporated in 1892. Its growth was due at first to the railroad shops, and later to the irrigation projects which turned much of the surrounding desert into productive agricultural lands.