Fort Henry, First American Post West of the Divide

On this stretch of Henry's Fork of the Snake River stood the first buildings Americans ever raised in what is now Idaho. In the fall of eighteen ten, Captain Andrew Henry and a party from the Missouri Fur Company, pushed off the Three Forks of the Missouri by hostile encounters, crossed the Continental Divide and built a small cluster of cabins here, a few miles below present-day Saint Anthony. It was the first American trading post west of the Divide, and Henry is believed to be the first American to do business on this side of the mountains.

The hard winter and poor trapping broke the venture, and the men scattered in the spring of eighteen eleven. That October, the overland Astorians passed through, left their horses, and built canoes to chase the Snake toward the Pacific. A monument marks the spot today.