Bear River Massacre Site

Near Preston in southeastern Idaho, this is the site where California Volunteers attacked a Shoshone village on January 29, 1863, in one of the deadliest episodes of the 19th-century American Indian Wars. Estimates of Shoshone deaths reached 384. The landscape shaped the violence: Battle Creek and its ravine served as a defensive position and shelter, while some fleeing villagers were shot trying to cross the Bear River. Afterward, the soldiers recovered their own dead but left the Shoshone where they fell. Later recognition and land purchases by the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone Nation tied the ground to memorialization, burial, and tribal stewardship.

Idaho · United States