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Boxcar Encampment

The city of Pocatello was officially founded as a railroad town in 1889.

Yet, the confluence of events that brought the railroad to the area we call Pocatello was first recorded to have happened in late fall of 1882, when the final tracks were laid for the Utah and Northern Railroad’s north and south line, which connected it to the railroad’s west and east line.

Except for the building of a small freight depot at the end of 1882 and the construction of the Pacific Hotel, train stalls and several work shops, along with a couple of peripheral trading stores the following year, there were no permanent housing for railroad crews who worked and maintained the area as Pocatello Junction. Railroad workers lived and slept in tents and box cars until 1887, when five-hundred railroad workers from Eagle Rock, many with their families accompanying them, arrived in Pocatello’s make-shift boxcar encampment and began building permanent structures. More details here.

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