POCATELLO, IDAHO

We made a brief stop in Pocatello on our way to Idaho Falls. It's the fourth largest city in Idaho with a population of about 55,000 and it's the home of Idaho State University. After watching the Idaho State Bengals football team play on TV in peculiar Holt Arena, we just had to get a look at it in person.

The Supreme Commander on
the ISU campus in Pocatello, ID

First, we made a quick cruise through Pocatello's historic downtown district, then we drove to the north end to the city to the university. Holt Arena opened in 1970 and it's the oldest enclosed stadium on a college campus in America. It's the second oldest of all as the Astrodome opened about five years earlier. Holt Arena isn't a huge stadium like the Astrodome, though. It's more like an over sized, Quonset hut. Holt Arena seats about 12,000 for a football game and 8,000 for a basketball game. After seeing the success of Idaho State's Holt Arena, in 1975, the University of Idaho in Moscow enclosed its stadium in similar fashion.

If you see a game played at ISU or Idaho, you can tell as soon as you see the goal posts. They're not really posts in the ground as you would see on a traditional football field. Instead, they're mounted on the walls at each end of the stadium. There was a regional youth wrestling match in progress when we visited so the football field (artificial grass surface) was covered with wrestling mats. But the goal posts were still mounted on the walls.

Another odd thing we discovered at Holt Arena is that it doesn't have fold-down seats like you see in most stadia. Instead, it has those molded plastic chairs (minus the attached metal legs) we used to see in meeting rooms and hospital waiting rooms.