Washakie Township

Located just south of Portage, Utah near the Utah/Idaho border in Utah’s Box Elder county, for decades the Washakie Township represented an alternative to reservation life for the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone.

In 1880, a handful of Shoshone families and a few Mormon missionaries settled there, calling the settlement Washakie in honor of their esteemed leader, Chief Washakie. Chief Sagwitch and his Northwestern Band of the Shoshone were destitute and hopeless after three quarters of their tribe were murdered in the Bear River Massacre, north of Preston, Idaho in 1863. One decade later, Sagwitch made peace with the occupiers of his homeland by joining the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Through the help of the church, the Shoshone began a homestead community away from Fort Hall where they felt they would be free to practice their new religion.

Over 100 Shoshones converted to Mormonism, and settled in Washakie. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints put up much of the seed money and land for the settlement, though the Shoshone applied for the land themselves under federal provisions. Over the next eighty years hundreds of Shoshone lived in Washakie, the home of the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone. Here, they made their home until the 1960s. At Washakie’s pinnacle in the 1920s, more than 300 worked there as farmers and ranchers. Relying at first on subsistence agriculture, supplemented with deer meat, the Northwestern Band also marketed crops of wheat and potatoes, along with purebred cattle and sheep, which they sold at premium prices as their land base grew.

At Washakie, they were allowed to speak Shoshone and perform traditional ceremonies—which the US government wanted to eliminate. In the 1920s the Shoshone established a grade school complete with playground equipment and modern desks there. The school—established and maintained by the LDS Church—taught the students to speak, read, and write English but did not discourage the exploration of Shoshone culture. After elementary school, most students attended nearby high schools and a remarkably high percentage also attended college.
The first years at Washakie were tough. Sickness and food shortages often plagued the community. Over time, though, the settlement began to flourish. The people of Washakie, many of whom were Mormon converts, donated heavily of their labor in the building of the Logan LDS Temple.

The second half of the twentieth century marked the gradual decline of the Washakie settlement. By World War II, Washakie was a relatively successful agricultural experiment, but the inhabitants still lived in small shacks and tents, without electricity. Illnesses claimed some residents, while others moved away in search of greater economic opportunity. Many found employment at the Hill Air Force Base. Drawn by the allure of steady pay and higher education, few young people stayed in Washakie, and its population dwindled until the land was sold in the 1970s to a rancher and the last vestiges of the Shoshone colony vanished. Today, Washakie is a ghost town.
In 1988, however, the Northwestern Band of the Shoshone bought back 185 acres of the Washakie land with the intention of making it their tribal headquarters.

Sources: Brandon Johnson for Utah Humanities © 2009 Natalie Larsen, Brigham Young University, “Washakie Township: The Mormon Alternative to Fort Hall,: Intermountain Histories, accessed July 6, 2020, http://www.intermountainhistories.org/item/show/206.