Fort Limhi was a Mormon missionary settlement during 1855-1858. President Brigham Young sent 27 men to settle an area in Idaho some 400 miles north of Salt Lake City. It would be the northernmost colony of all the Latter-day Saint settlements at the time. Moreover, they were to preach to the “remnants of the House of Jacob” who already inhabited the area.
A small fort and crude dwellings comprised the structural nucleus of the Salmon River Mission, as it was originally called. It was then Fort Limhi, the name coming from a king in the Book of Mormon. After just a few years, the settlers were driven from their fort by Native Americans, some of whom had converted to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Small remnants of the fort are still visible.
In Idaho, the name of the fort was changed from Limhi to Lemhi. The county, a branch of the Salmon River, and a nearby mountain pass also adopted the name Lemhi. That pass, incidentally, was the site where Lewis and Clark crossed the Continental Divide a half century earlier.