“Many outcroppings in the mountains near Pocatello give promise of most fabulous richness. Many assays from the rock have been made, and they run up into the thousands. The agent in charge of the reservation, however, has been strict in enforcing the treaty laws. In the summer of 1893 a company of Pocatello men discovered a copper ledge of marvelous promise, on Belle Marsh creek, on the reservation, and made a determined effort to work it. They put a force of men to work there and uncovered a ledge for a distance of a hundred feet, finding a well-defined ledge of wonderfully rich copper ore. They worked it until twice warned off by the Indian agent, and quit only when they were finally threatened with arrest. During the same summer a strong company of capitalists of Pocatello, Butte and Salt Lake City organized and made an effort to secure a lease of the mineral lands on the reservation; but other men in Pocatello, who had been watching prospects and opportunity for years, entered a protest and the interior department at Washington refused to grant the lease. The same year a Pocatello organization made an attempt to obtain permission to develop mines on this reservation, but failure likewise attended this only when they were finally threatened with arrest. In 1891 some very rich galena was discovered about two miles east of Pocatello, and this created a veritable stampede of miners who began digging vigorously. The signs were most encouraging, but the Indian agent again came to the front and drove the men from the reservation. According to the testimony of all the old timers in this region there are many rich deposits of the respective valuable minerals in nearly all the mountains of Bannock county. Apparently there is enough of coal and asbestos deposit here to make a whole community rich.” Pocatello’s railroad and ranching interests alone insure the development of a prosperous and fair-sized city, and in the immediate attention demanded by these activities, the mining possibilities of the neighborhood seem for the time to have fallen into the background. The day will come, however, when the Indian reservation will be thrown open, and when that day does come, a new source of wealth will be released which might easily place Pocatello well in the front rank of western cities.