Blackfoot

Blackfoot, city, seat (1885) of Bingham county, southeastern Idaho, U.S., near the confluence of the Snake and Blackfoot rivers. Founded on the Utah Northern Railroad in 1878 at the northern edge of Fort Hall Indian Reservation (1869), the city evolved as the centre of an irrigated agricultural (chiefly potato-growing) area. Development was stimulated by the establishment in 1949 of the National Reactor Testing Station (now Idaho National Engineering Laboratory), 32 miles (51 km) to the northwest. Nearby is the site of the original Fort Hall trading post built in 1834 by Boston merchant Nathaniel Wyeth and operated from 1838 to 1856 by the Hudson’s Bay Company. Inc. 1907. Pop. (2000) 10,419; (2010) 11,899.