Things get misspelled all the time. If you don’t believe that, you’re clearly not on Facebook. Here are a couple of misspellings that have had an impact on Idaho history.
CaribooCaribou County is named for Jesse “Cariboo Jack” Fairchild who was, in turn, nicknamed such because he had taken part in the gold rush in the Cariboo region of British Columbia in 1860. There are a lot of things around Soda Springs named after Cariboo Jack, including the ghost town of Caribou City, and the Caribou Mountains. Fairchild was born in Canada. What isn’t exactly clear is why the Cariboo region of British Columbia is spelled that way. Canadians don’t generally spell caribou differently. In any case Jack’s nickname became Caribou when it was attached to various sites in Caribou County, the last county created in Idaho.
KansasThis one is outrageous. The Treaty of Fort Bridger was, among other things, meant to preserve the right of the Bannock Tribe to harvest camas bulbs on Camas Prairie near present-day Fairfield. Unfortunately, Camas Prairie was written as Kansas Prairie in the treaty. Using that flimsy excuse white settlers let their cattle and hogs trample and root around the traditional Bannock gathering site, devastating the camas fields, and leading to the Bannock War of 1878.
