Shoshone Historic District

The lava rock was laid largely by Basque hands. Ignacio Berriochoa, a Basque stonemason, built the Galo Arambarri Boarding House in 1913 and 1914 to lodge the sheepherders the sign mentions, and the Anasola family ran another Basque boardinghouse nearby; both stand among dozens of lava-rock buildings around the county listed on the National Register in 1983. The twelve blocks of the original railroad plat were listed in 1975. The town says its own name Show-shown, and after 1936 Union Pacific's guests for Sun Valley left the main line here.

What the plaque says

Shoshone Historic District South Central Idaho's rail center since 1882, when trains reached here. Shoshone has a historic district of unusual interest. Branch rail lines to Wood River and Camas Prairie served distant farmers and miners, while a stage line to Shoshone Falls accomodated wealthy tourists who visited Idaho's foremost nineteenth century attraction. Vast sheep grazing lands made this a major early center for Basque herders. Use of lava rock for building construction gives Shoshone a distinctive historic character. 412 Text prepared by the Idaho Historical Society Marker made & installed by Idaho Transportation Department

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Minidoka National Historic Site — 19 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.
• Perrine Bridge — 23 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 — 23 mi
  Higher than Niagara, and turned up and down on a schedule. What reaches the rim is whatever the canals leave.
• Box Canyon Springs — 26 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

• Magic Dam — 18 mi
• Prehistoric Hunters — 19 mi
• Hunt — 19 mi
• Emigrant Road — 21 mi