A road over Moonshine: the short cut to American Falls, 1911–1912

Between the summer of 1911 and the harvest of 1912, American Falls and the north end of the Bannock valley, as Arbon Valley was then often called, got a new and shorter wagon road, surveyed over the Sunbeam and Moonshine divides in the hills between them. The American Falls Press followed it from survey to first harvest.

Arbon was then in Oneida County, whose commissioners sat at Malad; Power County, with American Falls as its seat, came in 1913. Much of the valley's growing wheat crop went to the railroad siding at Michaud, between American Falls and Pocatello. American Falls men who drove through the valley in July 1911 found the settlers much interested in a road that would shorten their haul. "The marketing of their grain is a growing problem," the Press wrote.

The survey

The Press reported on July 6, 1911:

County Surveyor Morgan and crew came in from the Moonshine country Saturday, where they spent about five days in surveying for a new road to Arbon. They received the benefit of the heavy rains and were completely drenched a good part of the time, but were very successful in the object of their trip.

By their line it was 22.97 miles from American Falls to Dave Daniels' ranch near the mouth of the West Fork, 13.97 of them from the ranch to the top of the Moonshine divide. "There is only one place on the new survey where the grade reaches 7 per cent while on the old road there was a long stretch of 14 per cent and one 17 per cent grade," the paper said. "The road will be twenty feet in width, which will permit teams to pass at any point."

The paper called the old one only "the road built two years ago." The road begun about a mile above the Rocky Ford in November 1908 had been reported with no grade as steep as five per cent, so if that was the road meant, the two reports are hard to square.

Snow on the unfinished road

In mid-September the commissioners were "considering bids on the new road to the Arbon country." In late November Arthur Kile and George Kell were working on the road to Arbon; much, the paper said, depended on the weather.

Snow had already come to the divide. The same issue, of November 23, 1911, told of Mrs. Lewis, who had come from Washington about two weeks before to take a school in the Bannock valley. Her hired livery driver did not know the road, and they set out over the "new and uncompleted road over the Moonshine divide." After a day floundering in snow, they reached the Evans sawmill about dusk the next evening with nothing to eat and not a match to build a fire. To keep from freezing, "the horses were taken into the cabin and placed one on each side of the table," and the two travelers used "the animals as a stove."

Then some Arbon people who had come for lumber arrived with food and matches, and "a prospective night of gloom was turned into one of comparative comfort." The paper went on:

Mrs. Lewis went home with the Arbon people, dismissing the driver, who had caused so much uneasiness and annoyance, refusing to pay for the team and the services of the driver, because of failure to make good.

The driver parted from the other teams at Bannock Creek. That night he reached Zaring's camp at Michaud, six miles from Pocatello, "completely lost, it is said, and almost frozen," and got home safely the next day. The camp was probably that of E. E. Zaring, an American Falls grain buyer; in December he reported forty Arbon farmers arriving at Michaud with wheat. The teacher's first name cannot be read in the digitized text of the page, the paper does not say which school she took, and which Evans family ran the sawmill is not stated.

Town cash and valley labor

On May 30, 1912, under the heading "Short Cut to Arbon," the Press announced "an excellent wagon road which will not only be a good road in summer and winter but also shorten the distance," by ten miles, according to a damaged line. A winter road mattered because "The people there could not market their grain during the good weather in the fall when so much other work was necessary." More than $1,000 had been raised, in cash from American Falls businessmen and in work from the people of Arbon, and grading had begun under Ezra Zaring, very probably the same man as E. E. Zaring.

On July 18 the paper reported the road finished to the Daniels place, good for light travel though not yet for heavy hauling. No 1912 report found describes the route, but the 1911 survey also ended at the Daniels ranch, so it was probably the Moonshine line.

Winning the wheat

On Sunday, August 11, 1912, six American Falls businessmen, among them L. L. Evans (of the American Falls Evans family, not the Arbon one), made a "get acquainted" trip for the Board of Trade and met Arbon farmers. They found the people of Arbon "very happy and prosperous." Pocatello had been the longer haul, the Press explained, but "the condition of the American Falls road made it better for many to go that way." Now "The new road has shortened the distance to this place and brings that valley twelve miles nearer than Pocatello."

A week later the Press wrote:

Pocatello will not let the Arbon valley trade come to American Falls without a last strenuous effort to again turn it their way and since the building of the better roads from that section to American Falls the trade has been coming this way instead of going to Pocatello, the distance being several miles nearer this city.

The road still needed money and tending: that August the Board of Trade heard word from Commissioner May that the county had not yet appropriated anything for it, though a warrant would be issued. At its August 29 meeting a member reported being told that the road needed a man for two or three days of repairs. That November, with rain and bad roads slowing the wheat, E. E. Zaring set out for Arbon the night before the election, got lost, and did not arrive until 3 p.m. on election day. The item does not say which road he took.

The article as printed

American Falls Press, July 6, 1911, page 1. Transcribed from the page scan.

FIND GOOD GRADES ON ARBON ROAD.
County Surveyor Morgan Successful in Finding Easy Grades and a Direct Route.
County Surveyor Morgan and crew came in from the Moonshine country Saturday, where they spent about five days in surveying for a new road to Arbon. They received the benefit of the heavy rains and were completely drenched a good part of the time, but were very successful in the object of their trip.
Over the surveyed road the distance from American Falls to Dave Daniels' ranch is 22.97 miles and the grades are much less than those on the road built two years ago. There is only one place on the new survey where the grade reaches 7 per cent while on the old road there was a long stretch of 14 per cent and one 17 per cent grade.
The distance from the Daniels ranch to the top of the Moonshine divide is 13.97 miles and according to Frank Moench, one of the viewers of the Sunbeam road, it is nine miles from the top of the divide to American Falls, making the distance to Daniels 22.97 miles.
Coming into Moonshine from the Bannock valley there is 1100 feet of dugway with a 5 per cent grade and 2,700 feet of 4 per cent grade, making a climb of 163 feet in two-thirds of a mile. There are two other short grades there, neither of which is more than 5 per cent.
From Moonshine to the top of Sunbeam divide the distance is 13,000 feet. Of this 877 feet has a 7 per cent grade and 2,100 feet a grade of three per cent. In crossing over the divide there is a dugway with practically no grade 2,600 feet long.
The construction of the road will not be expensive. The estimate of yardage is 4,691 cubic yards. There are about five and a fourth miles of sagebrush to be removed, two three-foot and one two-foot culverts to be put in, one sixteen foot span bridge, one ten-foot span bridge, and one ten-foot span bridge to be removed from an old road to the new survey.
The road will be twenty feet in width, which will permit teams to pass at any point.

On this site: the 1908 road, the Daniels family, the teacher's night on the divide and Alma Wood's storm on the Moonshine road.