Fort Hall

Fort Hall was a fort in the Western United States that was built in 1834 as a fur trading post by Nathaniel Jarvis Wyeth. It was located on the Snake River in the eastern Oregon Country, now part of present-day Bannock County in southeastern Idaho. Wyeth was an inventor and businessman from Boston, Massachusetts, who also founded a post at Fort William, in present-day Portland, Oregon, as part of a plan for a new trading and fisheries company. In 1837, unable to compete with the powerful British Hudson's Bay Company, based at Fort Vancouver, Wyeth sold both posts to it. Great Britain and the United States both operated in the Oregon Country in these years.

After being included in United States territory in 1846 upon settlement of the northern boundary with Canada, Fort Hall developed as an important station for emigrants through the 1850s on the Oregon Trail; it was located at the end of the common 500-mile (800 km) stretch from the East shared by the three far west emigrant trails. Soon after Fort Hall, the Oregon and California Trails diverged in northwesterly and southwesterly directions. An estimated 270,000 emigrants reached Fort Hall on their way west. The town of Fort Hall later developed eleven miles (18 km) to the east, and Pocatello developed about thirty miles (50 km) south on the Portneuf River.

In the 1860s, Fort Hall was the key post for the overland stage, mail and freight lines to the towns and camps of the mining frontier in the Pacific Northwest. In 1870, a New Fort Hall was constructed to carry out that function; it was located about 25 miles to the northeast. It protected stagecoach, mail and travelers to the Northwest.

Fort Hall is considered the most important trading post in the Snake River Valley. It was included within the Fort Hall Indian Reservation under the treaty of 1867. No building remains at either of its sites.

Text adapted from “Fort Hall” on Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Fort Hall ranks #3,523 of 8,134 worldwide in the atlas's castle fame ranking, and #67 of the 103 mapped in United States. Founded 1834, it is older than 10% of the atlas's dated landmarks — one of 607 atlas entries founded in the 19th century. Its Wikipedia articles were opened 2,821 times in the last 60 days, more than 74% of the atlas. See how United States compares in the castle statistics.

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