Salmon: Near the Birthplace of Sacagawea

Salmon sits in Lemhi County at the heart of country the Agaidika Shoshone have called home for centuries. Sacagawea, the woman who guided the Lewis and Clark Expedition across the continent, was born near here around seventeen eighty-eight, somewhere in the Lemhi Valley. Lewis and Clark crossed the Continental Divide at Lemhi Pass thirty miles to the southeast and followed the river through the present site of the city in eighteen oh five, hoping to find a navigable route west.

The Salmon River defeated them. Its gorge was too steep and the rapids too violent. They called it the River of No Return, and they were right.

Today that name belongs to the vast wilderness around it. The Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness, established in nineteen eighty, covers more than two million acres, the largest roadless area in the lower forty-eight.