Pocatello (pronounced
/?po?k?'t?lo?/) is the
county seat and largest city of
Bannock County,
[1] with a small portion on the
Fort Hall Indian Reservation in neighboring
Power County, in the southeastern part of the
U.S. state of
Idaho. It is the principal city of the "Pocatello, Idaho
Metropolitan Statistical Area" which encompasses all of Bannock and Power counties of Idaho. As of the
2000 census the population of Pocatello was 51,466 (2006 estimate 53,932)
[2] with a metro population of 83,303.
Pocatello is the fourth-largest city in the state and the second largest city in the Eastern Idaho region, after Idaho Falls. In 2007, Pocatello was ranked number twenty on Forbes' list of Best Small Places for Business and Careers.[3]
Pocatello is a home to Idaho State University and the manufacturing facility of ON Semiconductor. Founded as an important stop on the first railroad in Idaho during the gold rush, the city later became an important center for agriculture. It is located along the Portneuf River where it emerges from the mountains onto the Snake River Plain, along the route of the Oregon Trail. The name comes from Chief Pocatello, a chief of the Shoshoni who granted the right-of-way for the railroad across the Fort Hall Indian Reservation. The city is served by the Pocatello Regional Airport.
The section of the city along the Portneuf River was inhabited for several years by the Shoshoni and Bannock peoples for several centuries before the arrival of Europeans into the area in the early 19th century. In 1834, Nathaniel Jarvis Wyeth, a U.S. fur trader, established Fort Hall as a trading post north of the present location of the city. The post was later acquired by the Hudson's Bay Company and became an important stop on the Oregon Trail, a branch of which descended the Portneuf through the present-day location of the city. A replica of the Fort Hall trading post is now operated as museum in southern Pocatello.
