Surveyors for a Bannock Valley branch line, 1913

In 1913 Bannock Valley, now called Arbon Valley, had no railroad. Its grain was hauled out by team, and through that year the valley and its neighbors talked about how a line might reach it. On June 26, 1913, the Pocatello Tribune gave the talk a front-page headline: "Oregon Short Line Surveys Branch to Bannock Valley."

Talk before the survey

The earliest rumor found that year came from the other side of the mountains. In February the Semi-Weekly Pocatello Tribune passed along a report from the Downey Idahoan: S. F. Johnson, back from Logan, had heard that backers of electric railways in northern Utah would soon seek a franchise at Downey. From there, the story went, the line would cross Marsh Valley, enter the Hawkins Creek country, "cross the divide in Bannock valley and thence on to American Falls." The Downey paper recalled that surveyors had worked through Marsh Valley about a year earlier without saying what they were doing, and called it a matter of conjecture whether there was anything to the rumor.

In March the valley spoke for itself. W. E. Dawson wrote to the American Falls Press for the Arbon Commercial Club. The valley was building its own telephone line, he said, and more acreage had been planted than ever before. He asked the Press to bear in mind that the valley was "a splendid field for an electric line and the sooner the better."

Word from Arbon

The June report reached Pocatello by way of a road campaign. The Tribune said "J. H. Kowalis of Arbon" had been sent to Pocatello by the settlers of his district to push the Trail Creek road plan, a proposed new road over the Trail Creek divide to Pocatello. While in town he told the paper that a crew of engineers was in the field. They were surveying a line that would branch off from "the Raft river cutoff at or near Keller, Utah," run through Snowville, Utah, and Holbrook, Idaho, cross the Malad divide into Bannock Valley, and follow the valley down to the main line somewhere between Pocatello and American Falls. The paper called the valley one of the greatest grain districts in the southeast and said its settlers were "overjoyed at the possibility of a railroad."

The same front page explained why the road Kowalis had come to push had stalled. The Trail Creek route crossed the Fort Hall Reservation, and a right of way would need a formal application from the Power County commissioners, with a survey and a map. The Tribune doubted the commissioners were eager, since the road would send trade to Pocatello instead of American Falls. About $1,200 had been pledged in Pocatello and $700 to $1,000 in the Rattlesnake and Bannock valleys, toward an estimated cost of $7,500.

The Tribune printed the name as Kowalis, with the initials J. H. No J. H. Kowallis has been found in the valley. The likeliest men are the Kowallis brothers of the Meadow Ward at Pauline, Bishop Wilhelm F. Kowallis and John E. Kowallis, but which of them carried the news, if either did, is not known.

A summer of hopes

Through July others wrote as if the railroad were coming. The Rev. B. W. Rice, writing from Arbon on July 5, told the Tribune:

Five years from now we will be riding through here on the steam cars pointing out to companions this place and that place that could have been bought now at a poor man's figure, but cannot be bought then for $7000 for the quarter section.

He reckoned that hauling the year's 700,000 bushels of grain for sale to the railroad would cost 15 cents a bushel. On July 14 a report of two new Congregational churches in the valley expected one church house to stand "in the little valley village that is sure to follow the advent of the new railroad." On July 24 the Tribune reported that the Pocatello bankers C. A. Valentine and Ezra J. Merrill had come back from an auto trip to the valley expecting bumper crops:

Its development is handicapped by lack of transportation, but it is said the Short Line is contemplating the construction of a branch line to tap it soon.

In October the American Falls Press reprinted a Rockland Times report that a number of engineers had visited neighboring Rockland Valley that summer.

What came of it

No further report of the June survey has been found, and no Short Line record of it has been consulted. Where "Keller" and "the Raft river cutoff" were is left as the paper printed them. In January 1914 the Logan Republican, reporting a visit by Bishop Kowallis, wrote that some valley farmers hauled their grain twenty-two miles to market and that "a railroad is expected within a few years," as told in Great Change at Arbon. In September 1914 the Short Line's chief engineer came over from Malad by way of Holbrook and went back through the valley, with nothing to announce. The petitions, pledges and promoters that followed are told in The railroad that never came to Arbon Valley, 1914–1922. No line was ever built.

Fifty years after the June report, on June 30, 1963, the Idaho Sunday Journal reprinted its opening in a "50 Years Ago" column.

On this site: Pauline's beginnings and Bishop Kowallis's Meadow Ward, A minister's portrait of Bannock Valley in 1913 and the Double-P monorail plan of 1914.

The article as printed

Pocatello Tribune, June 26, 1913, page 1. Transcribed from the page scan.

Oregon Short Line Surveys Branch to Bannock Valley
Engineering Crew in the Field Cruising Out Route From Snowville, Utah, Through Holbrook, Idaho. Over Malad Divide and Down Through Rich Grain Country to Junction Point Somewhere Between Pocatello and American Falls—Settlers Jubilant Over Prospects for Road.
That the Short Line is planning a branch railroad through the heart of the fertile Bannock valley was the news brought to Pocatello by J. H. Kowalis of Arbon, who was sent to the Gate City by the settlers in his district to push the Trail creek road plan. Mr. Kowalis said a crew of engineers is now in the field surveying a line that will branch off from the Raft river cutoff at or near Keller, Utah, and run through Snowville, Utah, Holbrook, Idaho, over the Malad divide into Bannock valley and down the valley to a connection with the main line somewhere between Pocatello and American Falls. Bannock valley is one of the greatest grain districts in the southeast. Settlers in that district are overjoyed at the possibility of a railroad.