William Emsley Jackson's Diary of trailing a cattle herd from LaGrande, Oregon to Cheyenne, Wyoming

A 17 year old boy wrote down his experience of driving a cattle herd from LaGrande to Cheyenne in 1876. Two or three pages refer to the area from Raft River to Soda Springs and through Fort Hall, with descriptions of meeting herds heading to New Mexico and Montana. You'll get a laugh at the reference to mosquitoes, a mainstay of the bottoms even then, and may or may not be surprised that they saw evidence of a bear. Here is the link if you want to read the entire piece:

https://www.jstor.org/stable/3740586?read-now=1&seq=5

In a footnote to Jackson's diary, the author has noted a report by W.H. Danilson regarding the Fort Hall Agency's farming in 1875: The farm consisted of 234 acres, estimated to be producing 1800 bushels of wheat, 150 of barley and 800 of oats, 2000 bushels of potatoes, 1000 cabbages, and 200 tons of hay put up from the bottoms. This, from the U.S. Office of Indian Affairs, Report 1875, page 259.

Ralph Thurston is the author of "Tilden", a novel set in turn-of-the-century (twentieth) Bingham County. You can find a copy in Blackfoot at Kesler's Market, in Idaho Falls at Winnie and Mo's, and online