In spite of the wild and sometimes forbidding scenery that meets the traveler’s eye from the train window, there are probably few more peaceful communities than Bannock county in the farming sections of the east. Women frequently live alone and unprotected on isolated ranches and are seldom molested. The case of Hugh Whitney, the bandit and outlaw who robbed Pocatello of a true citizen, and upon whose head there rests a large reward, is today an exception. His story is too well known to be repeated in detail here. In brief, Hugh Whitney, who was a Wyoming sheepman, and a companion, held up a saloon at Monida, just over the Montana line, in 1911, and were apprehended on a train running south toward Pocatello. The sheriff who had boarded the train to make the arrest, placed his guns on a seat in order to handcuff the prisoners. Whitney grabbed these and shot both the sheriff and Conductor James Kidd, who was helping the officer. Conductor Kidd died in Pocatello within a few days. The sheriff recovered.
Whitney and his companion jumped from the moving train and separated in making their escape. Whitney was trailed by posses for weeks, and in the course of the chase killed several of his pursuers. Although blood-hounds were used in the attempt to capture him, he eluded all pursuit with an ingenuity worthy of a better cause. When the excitement had died down somewhat, he and his brother held up a bank in Cody, Wyoming, driving the employes into the safe and locking them up there while they made their escape.
Evidently the days of “bad men,” in the criminal sense of the term, are not yet ended in the far west, but the facility of communication afforded by the railway, telephone and telegraph makes their trade very hazardous, and the ordinary citizen lives in less danger of being held up or shot than does the wayfarer on the streets of New York or Chicago.
CHAPTER XI.
POCATELLO.
The city of Pocatello, so named in memory of an Indian chief, stands at the western entrance to the Portneuf canyon, and for that reason is appropriately known as the “Gate City.” Its site marks the junction of the Montana and Idaho divisions of the Oregon Short Line railroad, and the tremendous volume of traffic that passes through its yards, together with the many departments maintained here, is rapidly developing a large and prosperous city. Twenty-five years ago the town was a mere hamlet; in 1910 the United States Census returns gave a population of 9,100, and in 1914 Polk’s Directory credits Pocatello with over 12,000 inhabitants, to which must be added some 500 transients. The city is the metropolis and county seat of Bannock county, and the second largest place in the state of Idaho.
Pocatello is pre-eminently a railroad town, and to the railroad she owes her birth as well as her growth. When the westward course of the Oregon Short Line crossed the tracks of the Utah & Northern railroad, some fifty miles south of Idaho Falls, then called Eagle Rock, a hamlet naturally sprang up at the junction. This was in the heart of the Fort Hall Indian reservation, but the railroad had a grant of some two hundred acres for its right of way, upon which it allowed settlement, and upon which, in 1882, it erected the Pacific hotel and station. Shoshone had been selected by the railroad officials as a division terminal, but there being some dispute relative to the town-site, they determined upon Pocatello instead. In 1887 the town received a further impetus in the removal thither of the shops from Idaho Falls, which brought several hundred men, many of them with families, into the hamlet. For the accommodation of this addition, the railroad company built what is today known as Company Row.
One of the most historic buildings in the city is the two-story frame house to the left of the west end of the Center street viaduct. In the days when buildings were scarce and the little available space overcrowded, this building, now used for office purposes, served as a public meeting hall. Portneuf Lodge, No. 18, A. F. & A. M. was organized here in 1886, and met in the building for some time. In the late eighties the building was used for public school purposes, and in 1891 as the fire hall. At various times it has been used as a church, a theatre, a pool hall, and within its walls were held many a church fair that helped to build the present city churches, and many a dance that lives yet in the memories of the older members of Pocatello society. The city council also used it for a meeting place.
Although there was no land open for settlement, there quickly grew up a typical frontier town, “wide-open,” as the saying is, where excitement ran high, where vice went unashamed, and where saloons and gambling knew no closing hours nor Sunday laws. At last the demand for more room became so insistent, that the United States government purchased two thousand acres of reservation land from the Indians, to be used as a town-site. This was surveyed in 1889, and the following year lots were sold at auction at prices ranging from ten to fifty dollars. At that sale the foundation of many comfortable fortunes of today were made. Already some buildings had been erected, and it was feared that the purchase of their sites by other parties might cause trouble. But the squatter’s right was honored, and the man who had built a store or home was allowed to secure a title to his holdings.
The community was organized into a village during this year, with H. L. Becraft as chairman of the board of trustees, and D. K. Williams, A. F. Caldwell, L. A. West and Doctor Davis members. Another tract of reservation land was opened for settlement in 1905.