The state land selector on Rattlesnake Creek, 1911

In July 1911 the State of Idaho sent its land selector, I. H. Nash, to look for land the state might claim in the hills around the north end of the Bannock valley. He went first to the Moonshine country, in the hills between American Falls and Arbon, and then to the Rattlesnake country southwest of Pocatello, most likely the basin drained by Rattlesnake Creek that settlers had lately begun to call Crystal. Three short newspaper items follow his trip. On Rattlesnake Creek, the last of them reports, he found excellent land, but most of it was ceded Fort Hall Reservation land, and that, the paper said, stood in the way of selecting it for the state.

The selector's trip

On July 20 the American Falls Press reported that Nash had been in town on Monday and Tuesday "selecting some land for the state in the Moonshine country," and had then left for Bannock County. The rest of the sentence is garbled in the digitized text of the page, though legible fragments mention the Oneida County line and the Rattlesnake country.

Nine days later the Semi-Weekly Pocatello Tribune explained what the state was after:

That the state of Idaho, under the terms of an agreement recently reached with the department of the interior relating to sections 16 and 36 of state land in national forests, may select in lieu a compact body of land in the Pocatello forest reserve, along the summit of the Mink creek divide and along Rattlesnake creek, is indicated by the presence in that country of I. H. Nash, state land selector, who, following an inspection of lands in the Moonshine country, came to Bannock county to look over the Battlesnake [Rattlesnake] region.

On August 4 the daily Pocatello Tribune, reporting Nash in Pocatello for the state land sale, gave the result. He had found some excellent land along Rattlesnake Creek, but most of it was ceded land, and that "presented a legal obstacle to its selection." Nash nonetheless spoke warmly of the district, and the paper added that the country was opening up fast and that the crops would be abundant that year.

Ceded land

The Tribune explained only that the land had been in the reservation and was "ceded back to government" when it was opened to settlement. Under an agreement signed in 1898 and ratified in 1900, the Shoshone and Bannock people had given up the southeastern part of the reservation, the Crystal basin among it, and in 1902 that land opened to homesteaders. The 1900 Act set out how the ceded land was to be disposed of, under the homestead, townsite and mining laws or at public auction, as the site's account of the cession tells. The Tribune did not say which rule stood in the state's way, and the papers read for this post do not settle it.

The Tribune's picture of a district "being rapidly opened up" fits what the American Falls Press heard from Crystal that June: a settlement so new that few of its people had been there more than two years, with fields of up to 300 acres and talk of building two schoolhouses. That story is told in Crystal, the hidden settlement up Rattlesnake Creek.

The selector

Nothing in the papers ties Nash to the valley's families. The Press seems to give his first name as Isaac in 1910, when he was working for the state land board, though the text of that item is muddled. In November 1911 the Caldwell Tribune called him a former Oneida County assessor, when it repeated his remark in the Malad Enterprise about the wagons hauling Arbon wheat. In 1912 he sat as a delegate from Franklin precinct at the Oneida County Republican convention in American Falls. He was still a state land selector in January 1914, with Arthur Budge, and by August 1919 he was Idaho's land commissioner.

What is not known

No later report has been found saying whether the state took any land along Rattlesnake Creek, on the Mink Creek divide or in the Moonshine country. The items do not say which tracts Nash looked at, and they name no settler he met. The two Tribune items also describe his errand a little differently, one as a search for forest lands and the other as a search across ceded land; both are given here as printed. None of the items names Crystal. The Semi-Weekly Tribune also placed the Rattlesnake region in Bannock County, while Crystal itself was part of Oneida County until 1913, so the items may refer partly to land on the Bannock County side of the line; they do not say where along the creek Nash went. The "Rattlesnake country" is taken here to be the Rattlesnake Creek basin where Crystal lay, because the creek drains that basin and the basin was part of the ceded land, but that reading is probable rather than certain.

On this site: Crystal follows the community on the ceded land, and A road over Moonshine tells of the road surveyed that summer over the Moonshine divide toward Arbon.

The article as printed

Pocatello Tribune, August 4, 1911, page 6. Transcribed from the page scan.

NO SELECTIONS ON RATTLESNAKE CREEK
Agent of State Land Board Runs Across a Snag in the Way of Legal Obstacle.—Is Ceded Land.
State Land Selector I. H. Nash, who is in the city attending the state land sale, recently made a trip through the Rattlesnake country, southwest of Pocatello, for the purpose of making some selections of land for the state. He found some excellent land, but the fact that most of it is ceded land presented a legal obstacle to its selection. The land was formerly in the Fort Hall Indian reservation, and when that portion was thrown open to settlement, it was ceded back to government. Mr. Nash is enthusiastic in praise of the Rattlesnake district. The country is being rapidly opened up and the crops this year will be abundant.