Fort Lemhi

Lemhi is a misspelled king. The missionaries named their fort for Limhi, a Book of Mormon king whose expedition took twenty-two days, as their own journey north had, and the name spread from the fort to the river, the valley, the pass, the county and the Agaidika themselves, whom outsiders came to call the Lemhi Shoshone. The sign's Indian trouble was a raid on February 25, 1858, by some 250 Bannock and Shoshone men, which killed two missionaries and drove off the cattle, then worth more than ever to sell to the army marching on Utah.

What the plaque says

Fort Lemhi In 1855 a group of Mormon missionaries came north from Utah to found a remote colony just below the bench east of here. A religious settlement rather than a military fort, Salmon River Mission grew to more than 100 settlers before Indian trouble forced them to abandon the valley in 1858. By that time the missionaries had baptised 100 Indians and had begun irrigated farming in spite of ruinous summer frost and plagues of grasshoppers. Some of the old mission ditches still are used, and part of an old adobe mission wall still stands at Fort Lemhi. 128 Text prepared by the Idaho Historical Society Marker made & installed by Idaho Transportation Department

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Lemhi Pass — 9.9 mi
  Lewis walked up a Shoshone road looking for the Pacific and saw only more mountains.
• Sacajawea Interpretive, Cultural and Educational Center — 16 mi
  In the valley where she was born, a center that spells her name the way many of her people say it.

More markers nearby

• Lewis and Clark — 1.7 mi
• MacDonald's Battle — 2.6 mi
• Lewis and Clark — 5.0 mi
• Sacajawea — 5.0 mi