Lemhi Creek enters on the left. After getting lost in the Lemhi Mountains one winter, Harry Serren acquired the name “Lemhi”. He prospected on the bar downstream in the 1880s and the creek and bar retained his nickname.
Numerous locations in the region are named Lemhi. In 1865, a party of twenty seven Mormon missionaries established a settlement near Salmon City which they called Lemhi, in honor of King Limhi, a biblical prophet. Although the missionaries were unsuccessful in converting the Bannock and Shoshone Indians to their religion and abandoned their efforts in 1868, many of the missionaries remained and established Mormon communities.