Chubbuck, Idaho

Chubbuck is located against the northern city limits of Pocatello. Pocatello has offered to annex Chubbuck several times over the years, starting back in the 1960's, but so far, Chubbuck has been able to hold them off.

Chubbuck was founded as a railroad siding where agricultural produce from the area was loaded onto train cars. One story says the name came from Earl Chubbuck, an early railroad conductor who lived in Blackfoot. He had the job of loading the produce (mostly sugar beets in those days) onto the railroad cars. He was there long enough that the siding came to be referred to as Chubbuck Siding, which name was later shortened when the town grew up.

In the beginning, Chubbuck was kind of a rough area as Pocatello moved to get rid of all their saloons and gambling halls and Chubbuck welcomed them. Then the State of Idaho changed the rules and required that any establishment that sold booze by the drink and had slot machines (which were legal in Idaho at the time) needed to be licensed and inside the town limits of an incorporated town. So Chubbuck (as a whole) presented 2 different applications for incorporation to the Bannock County Commissioners in 1949. One application delineated a smaller village that was more easily controlled by the "business" interests while the other was for a larger village that the "business" opponents felt would outlaw the booze and gambling. Lawsuits went back and forth, pushed up the ladder of the courts until finally, the larger village plan won out, sort of. The incorporation was for the larger village but also allowed the sale of liquor by the drink and the operation of slot machines... From that date on, Chubbuck has grown by leaps and bounds, although the slot machines were outlawed years ago and the saloons have been cleaned up.