Long before the first wagon train of emigrants set out in 1841, the route later known as the Oregon Trail followed pathways discovered and described by explorers and mountain men in the early 1800s and traveled for countless years by Native Americans and migrating wildlife. Ancient earthen-covered lava flows between the Bear River and Fort Hall provided a fairly level road through the Upper Portneuf Valley. In the winter of 1835-36, trapper Osborne Russell and fifteen companions stayed at a place called Mutton Hill on the Portneuf River, where hot springs, bighorn sheep on the rocky hillsides, and buffalo in the valley made it a choice camping spot. During the 1850s, entrepreneurs from Salt Lake City and Fort Hall brought freight wagons of merchandise and established businesses along the road, and in 1853 emigrants reported they were hardly out of sight of these traders. In 1863, cattleman Alexander Toponce came up the Portneuf Valley from northern Utah, and by the 1870s he was operating a ranch on Toponce Creek across the valley from this spot after renting the Fort Hall Indian reservation from the government as cattle pasture. Settlement here began with homesteading in 1880 and the establishment of Chesterfield Town in 1883, after most of the main migration along the Oregon Trail had declined, though some overland travelers still passed through and were welcomed by Chesterfield families in the valley where buffalo once roamed.

Photo: Barry Swackhamer

Bancroft, Idaho · USA