The vicinity adjacent to Pocatello is rich in mineral deposits, but most of them lie on the Indian reservation upon which white men are not allowed to trespass. In his “History of Idaho,” Mr. Hiram T. French speaks as follows of the mining resources of Bannock county:
“Many outcroppings in the mountains near Pocatello give promise of most fabulous richness. Many assays from the rock have been made, and they run up into the thousands. The agent in charge of the reservation, however, has been strict in enforcing the treaty laws. In the summer of 1893 a company of Pocatello men discovered a copper ledge of marvelous promise, on Belle Marsh creek, on the reservation, and made a determined effort to work it. They put a force of men to work there and uncovered a ledge for a distance of a hundred feet, finding a well-defined ledge of wonderfully rich copper ore. They worked it until twice warned off by the Indian agent, and quit only when they were finally threatened with arrest. During the same summer a strong company of capitalists of Pocatello, Butte and Salt Lake City organized and made an effort to secure a lease of the mineral lands on the reservation; but other men in Pocatello, who had been watching prospects and opportunity for years, entered a protest and the interior department at Washington refused to grant the lease. The same year a Pocatello organization made an attempt to obtain permission to develop mines on this reservation, but failure likewise attended this only when they were finally threatened with arrest. In 1891 some very rich galena was discovered about two miles east of Pocatello, and this created a veritable stampede of miners who began digging vigorously. The signs were most encouraging, but the Indian agent again came to the front and drove the men from the reservation. According to the testimony of all the old timers in this region there are many rich deposits of the respective valuable minerals in nearly all the mountains of Bannock county. Apparently there is enough of coal and asbestos deposit here to make a whole community rich.”
Pocatello’s railroad and ranching interests alone insure the development of a prosperous and fair-sized city, and in the immediate attention demanded by these activities, the mining possibilities of the neighborhood seem for the time to have fallen into the background. The day will come, however, when the Indian reservation will be thrown open, and when that day does come, a new source of wealth will be released which might easily place Pocatello well in the front rank of western cities.
In the southeastern counties of Idaho there lies an extensive shore-line of middle carboniferous limestones and shales, which has been outlined by the United States Geological Survey, and a very large portion of which is contained in Bannock county. This in its entirety composes the largest phosphate field in the world, the rock phosphate of the deposit being seventy per cent pure, in beds of from three to eight feet thick. In December, 1908, the secretary of the interior withdrew from all kinds of entry 4,541,300 acres of land, part of which extends over the Utah line, pending an examination of their phosphate resources. During the summer of 1909, the United States Geological Survey conducted field work on this area, which resulted in the restoration of some of these lands and the withdrawal of others. The total area now withheld is 2,551,399 acres.
The rock phosphate deposits of Bannock county are original sedimentary formations made when this part of the earth was still under water. Since then other rock-forming sediments have accumulated, so that thousands of feet of subsequent strata have overlain them. Deformation of the earth’s surface has broken these strata, which originally lay flat. Hence these rock-phosphate deposits resemble coal and limestone, rather than ore deposits, such as veins or lodes. No entirely satisfactory explanation of their source or manner of accumulation has yet been given.
The value of these deposits will be more readily understood when it is known that prior to their discovery the total known supply in the United States was barely sufficient to last forty years. In addition to this, most of the deposits were in the control of European investors, which threatened to put the American farmer at the mercy of foreign speculators.
In his book entitled, “The Conservation of Natural Resources of the United States,” Professor Van Hise, of the University of Wisconsin, says: “The most fundamental of the resources of this nation is the soil, which produces our food and clothing, and one of the most precious of the natural resources of America, having a value inestimably greater than might be supposed from the present market value, is our phosphate-rock resources.”
Phosphoric acid is essentially a soil fertilizer. It is really nothing else than a rich manure, as the odoriferous smell given off when two pieces are rubbed together amply testifies. The enormous deposits of this powerful fertilizer practically insure the agricultural future of Idaho. The secretary of the interior, in a recent report, said: “The present crop yields of the virgin fields of the west under irrigation cannot be expected to be maintained by irrigation water alone, and the intensive methods of that region will within a few years have to figure on artificial fertilizers to maintain their great yield.”
And Nature, foreseeing our future need, has provided for it in advance.
The limestone deposits near Inkom are said to be valuable for the manufacture of cement.