Pocatello, Idaho: A Chief's Name on a Railroad Junction

Pocatello, Idaho, carries the name of a chief of the 1860s, and the name was on a railroad station before there was much of a town around it. What the word itself means is another matter: the only explanation in the old Idaho books comes from one author, and we couldn’t find anyone who backs it up.

A station in the sagebrush

When Shoshone and Bannock leaders on the Fort Hall Reservation signed an agreement on July 18, 1881, to let the Utah & Northern Railroad cross their land, the text already mentioned “Pocatello Station,” where the right-of-way was to be twice as wide. Congress ratified it on July 3, 1882. The full text is in Charles Kappler’s 1903 compilation of Indian laws and treaties.

There wasn’t much there yet. James Hawley’s 1920 History of Idaho says the site was “a sagebrush plain” in 1881. The next year the Oregon Short Line reached it and the Pacific Hotel went up. The railroad had planned to put its division point at Shoshone, but after trouble over the townsite there, it chose Pocatello, where the only buildings were the hotel and the store of the Fort Hall Indian trader. Arthur Saunders, writing his History of Bannock County in 1915, says a hamlet “naturally sprang up at the junction” of the two lines. By 1888, an act of Congress about selling town lots called the place Pocatello Junction.

The town kept growing after 1887, when the Utah & Northern shops moved in from Idaho Falls, then still called Eagle Rock.

The chief behind the name

On the name, the local books agree. Saunders says the city was “so named in memory of an Indian chief,” and Hawley says it was “named in memory of the old Bannock chief.” John Rees, in his 1918 book on Idaho place names, also calls him a chief of the Bannock and spells his name Pokatello.

Rees has more, and you should know it’s written from the settlers’ side. He blames Pocatello and his followers for killing a California emigrant train near the City of Rocks in 1862. He says that in January 1863, Gen. P. E. Connor attacked their winter camp on the Bear River and nearly wiped out the band, and that in July 1863 the government signed a treaty with Pocatello and his followers, whom it called the Northwestern Bands. The treaty itself, signed at Box Elder, Utah, on July 30, 1863, and printed in the second volume of Kappler’s compilation, is with the “northwestern bands of the Shoshonee Indians,” so the government’s own paperwork counted Pocatello’s people as Shoshone. Rees quotes the treaty on Pocatello’s country: bounded “on the west by Raft River and on the east by the Portneuf Mountains.” Most of that land went into the Fort Hall Reservation in 1869.

Rees also tells a different version of how the name reached the spot. He says Ben Holladay opened a stage line from Salt Lake City to Virginia City, Montana, in 1864 and named one of its stations Pocatello, and that it grew into the town. Hawley and Saunders don’t mention any stage station. Both start the town with the railroad.

What does “Pocatello” mean?

This is where the record gets thin. Rees says it’s a Shoshone word, “Po,” “road,” “ka,” “not” and “tello,” “to follow,” so “He does not follow the road,” and that it fit the chief “because of his stealthy habits and thieving raids.” He doesn’t say where he got that. Gannett’s national place-names book of 1905 doesn’t have an entry for Pocatello at all, and none of the other sources we checked gives a meaning. So if you see “he does not follow the road” quoted as fact, it traces back to one writer in 1918, and we haven’t found a language expert who confirms it.

The city’s own nickname is easier to explain. Saunders and Hawley both call it the “Gate City,” and Saunders explains why: it stands at the western entrance to the Portneuf canyon. Saunders put the rest bluntly in 1915: “Pocatello is pre-eminently a railroad town, and to the railroad she owes her birth as well as her growth.”

Sources & further reading

• James H. Hawley, ed., History of Idaho, vol. 1 (1920), pp. 751–752. The sagebrush plain of 1881, the Oregon Short Line and the Pacific Hotel in 1882, the division point moved from Shoshone, and the town “named in memory of the old Bannock chief.”
• Arthur C. Saunders, The History of Bannock County, Idaho (1915), chapter XL. The city “so named in memory of an Indian chief,” the hamlet at the junction, the “Gate City,” and the railroad town.
• John E. Rees, Idaho Chronology, Nomenclature, Bibliography (1918), entries “Bannock” and “Pokatello.” His account of the chief, the 1863 events and treaty, the Holladay stage station, and the only explanation of the name’s meaning we found.
• Charles J. Kappler, ed., Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties, vol. 1 (1903). The 1881 agreement with the Shoshone and Bannock, ratified in 1882, which names “Pocatello Station,” and the 1888 act that refers to Pocatello Junction.
• Charles J. Kappler, ed., Indian Affairs: Laws and Treaties, vol. 2, Treaties (1903), pp. 650–651. The Box Elder treaty of July 30, 1863, with the “northwestern bands of the Shoshonee Indians,” including the article on the country claimed by Pocatello.
• GNIS feature 397053 (U.S. Geological Survey). The federal record for Pocatello, established in 1882.