130 



GUIDEBOOK OF THE WESTEEX UNITED STATES 



Blackfoot River/ which the raihoad crosses 1 mile south of the 

 village of Blackfoot, is the north boundary of the Fort Hall Indian 

 Reservation. 



Blackfoot city and river are named from a tribe of North American 

 Indians. The 



name 



Blackfoot. 



by pioneer whites that their leggins were generally 



alkin 



ninionly 



Elevation 4,502 feet. T]^^. Indians a 



Population 2,202. - , ii*jjit i'-r> 



ogdea 158 miles. ou the streets, liowever, belong to the Lemnij i>an- 



nock, or Shoshone tribes. Blackfoot 



sometimes 



ii 



grove city J 



}j 



gricultural 

 ise all the 



streets in 



with 



trees. It is noteworthy that the first trees ever planted in upper 



Blackfoot 



as 



Three grain 



LOur mill 

 district 



finest 



4^^ J. ^ 



The railroad station, one of the 



hill 



Blackfoot 



lines to Mackay and Aberdeen. Gasohne motor trains are run on 

 these lines and also*to Pocatello. The city water supply is pumped 

 from weUs drilled to depths of 120 to 150 feet, wliich reach basalt 

 (black lava) at 65 feet. These weUs show the depth of sand and 

 gravel deposited at this place by Snake and Blackfoot rivers in 

 wandering about over the surface before settling in their present 

 courses. 



The electricity used in Blackfoot is brought from a power plant on 

 Snake River at American Falls, 40 miles to the southwest.^ Gold 

 placers on Snake River about 15 mile^ below Blackfoot have been . 

 worked intermittently in former years, but are now idle. In hard 

 times a few men wash out a httle gold by panning, but here, as 

 elsewhere on Snake River, the gold is so flaky and fine that it is 

 diflScult to recover. Several attempts at large operations vnth 

 dredges have been failures. A beet-sugar factory at Blackfoot, built 

 in 1905 at a cost of $500,000, contracts for the beets from about 



'^" 



^ The mean discharge of Blackfoot 

 River in 1906-1909, measured at Presto, 

 a few miles upstream from the railroad, 

 was 415 cubic, feet a second. It 



has 



maximum 



.nimum 



during tliat period. No hydroelectric 

 power plants are in operation or in 

 process of construction on this stream. 

 Although the fall of the river from the 

 Blackfoot dam down to the mouth of the 



canyon is comparatively great, the storage 

 of water for irrigation makes it impracti- 

 cable to develop any very large amount of 

 continuous power. Besides the 48,000 

 acres to be irrigated on the Fort Hall 

 Reservation, 6,000 to 10,000 acres are irri- 

 gated by independent or private ditches 

 taking water from the river. 



^ The mean discharge of Snake River at 

 Blackfoot during 1911-1914 was 7,930 

 cubic feet a second. 



