The Portneuf & Bear River Country
Newe country from Fort Hall to Bear Lake — Boa Ogoi, the Bear River Massacre site now in Shoshone hands, the Oregon Trail at old Fort Hall, Pocatello, Franklin, Lava Hot Springs and Soda Springs.
The Northwestern Shoshone called the bend of the Bear River north of today's Preston Boa Ogoi, the Big River, and its hot springs made a good winter home for generations. Before dawn on January 29, 1863, Army volunteers out of Fort Douglas attacked the camp there and killed hundreds of men, women and children — one of the largest massacres of Native people in American history. For most of the century that followed, the only memorial was a 1932 roadside monument calling it a battle. In 2018 the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation bought several hundred acres of the site and began restoring it as its own ground.
Five years after Boa Ogoi, the 1868 Fort Bridger Treaty set aside the Fort Hall Reservation for the Shoshone and Bannock, governed today from Fort Hall by the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes. It takes its name from the trading post Nathaniel Wyeth built on the Snake in 1834, where the Oregon and California trails ran together before parting farther west at the Raft River. Pocatello, the railroad city on the Portneuf, carries the name of a Shoshone leader of those years.
Mormon settlers founded Franklin in 1860 believing they were still in Utah; it is the oldest town in Idaho. East of it the Portneuf and the Bear drain a country of volcanic springs — the hot pools at Lava Hot Springs, the carbonated water at Soda Springs — and US-89 runs south through Montpelier to Bear Lake, the turquoise lake Idaho shares with Utah.
What to See in The Portneuf & Bear River Country
10 places across the region, grouped by what they are.
Geology & Rock Formations
Natural Areas
Historic Sites
Towns & Gateways
Scenic Drives through The Portneuf & Bear River Country
U.S. 89 and U.S. 30: The Bear Lake Crossing
From Bear Lake's Utah shore north into Idaho: the refuge, the cave, the emigrants' camp at Montpelier, the Soda Springs geyser and the hot pools at Lava.
U.S. 91 and Idaho 34: The Cache Valley Crossing
North from Logan up Cache Valley into Idaho: Franklin, Preston, the Boa Ogoi massacre site, the Black Canyon at Grace and the geyser at Soda Springs.
Stories from The Portneuf & Bear River Country
The Portneuf & Bear River Country rewards the unhurried. Pick a base, fan out, and let the country between the headline stops surprise you.
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