Emigrant Road

The road the sign follows is the Snake's north bank. The main Oregon Trail kept to the south side for some 300 miles below Fort Hall; from 1852 a north-side route crossed the river above Thousand Springs, and emigrants who took it said the grass was better there. After 1869 the freight and stage road from the railroad at Kelton, Utah, followed much of the same line. Shoshone Falls lay off the regular wagon routes but close enough that its roar carried for miles, and many travelers made the side trip to see it.

What the plaque says

Emigrant Road More than a century ago, fur trappers and emigrants followed an old Indian trail that crossed here on its way to Oregon. Hudson's Bay Company traders preferred this route between Fort Hall and Fort Boise, but early emigrant wagons had to travel a road south of Snake River until ferries and road improvements let wagons come this way. Shoshone Falls--known until 1849 as Canadian Falls to British and French trappers--was a spectacular attraction along this road. 326 Text prepared by the Idaho Historical Society Marker made & installed by Idaho Transportation Department

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Perrine Bridge — 1.4 mi
  Four hundred and eighty-six feet of air between deck and river, and the one span in the country you may jump from without asking.
• Shoshone Falls — 3.0 mi
  Higher than Niagara, and turned up and down on a schedule. What reaches the rim is whatever the canals leave.
• Minidoka National Historic Site — 11 mi
  The prisoners built a board for the names of their sons in the Army. When the camp was given away as farms, the board was lost.
• Box Canyon Springs — 20 mi
  The eleventh-largest spring in the United States, pouring from the head of a dead-end canyon with water that sank into the lava far to the northeast.

More markers nearby

• Shoshone Falls — 1.5 mi
• College of Southern Idaho — 1.5 mi
• Hansen Bridge — 8.4 mi
• Prehistoric Hunters — 8.8 mi