Hot lunches at the Clifton Creek school, 1915–1916
In 1915 Lola Skartvedt began cooking hot noon lunches with her pupils in a bare shack school on Clifton Creek near Crystal, and the county paper said the idea should spread statewide.
1915 in the valley.
News, observations, announcements, and remembrances from the original Arbon Valley community blog.
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Community blog · 2010–2020 · original publication order · stories from the old papers added since 2026
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Thanksgiving and Christmas at Arbon's Central school, 1915
In the stormy late fall of 1915 the *Press* printed the Central school's Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve programs, naming the Arbon children who recited, sang and acted in them.
The long wait for Arbon's telephone line, 1913–1915
Arbon Valley organized its own telephone company in 1913 and talked over barbed wire while it waited for the long-distance line from American Falls, which arrived in December 1915.
The Arbon road controversy: a road across the reservation, 1915
In 1915 Power County paid to build its stretch of the valley's road north across the Fort Hall Reservation before allotment could close the way, and the bill set off a county quarrel.
Henry Shandrew's clean wheat in a smutty year, 1915
In 1915 Power County's new agent found no smut in Henry Shandrew's Arbon wheat while smut spread through the valley, and a plant from a field near Arbon became a bunt-immune wheat.
Overland from Dayton and a fire at Knox Canyon, October 1915
A family from Dayton, Washington, reached Arbon by wagon with their stock after losing horses on the road; the same column told of a stubble fire stopped near 1,500 bushels of grain.
Two solid townships of wheat: Arbon Valley's crop of 1915
Late spring rains, the valley's first combines, short-handed crews and dry-season fires: the American Falls Press followed Arbon Valley's wheat harvest of 1915.
Over the mountain to Malad: the valley's south end in 1915
In 1915 the South Arbon news column followed hogs, grain, machinery and patients over the mountain road to Malad, the town the valley's south end relied on.
The long road to the doctor: Arbon Valley's sick and hurt in 1915
In 1915 Arbon Valley's sick and injured were carried to doctors at Malad, Pocatello and Ogden, or a doctor was sent for; in December the long-distance telephone arrived.
Peter M. Larsen: summers at Summit, winters in Mendon
For decades the papers followed Peter M. Larsen, a Mendon schoolteacher, between his Cache Valley home and the family ranch at the Summit end of Arbon Valley.
Frank Phelps of Arbon, Who Froze to Death in 1934
Frank Phelps, an Arbon Valley farmer in the papers from 1915, froze to death in 1934, and his son Bud, then 14, left school to run the family farm.
Pierce and Ella Hardman, fifty years on an Arbon Valley homestead
From 1911 the papers followed Pierce Hardman of Mendon to his Arbon Valley homestead, which he and his wife Ella farmed for half a century, later wintering in North Logan.
The Fourth at the Central school and the 24th at Pauline, 1915
In 1915 Arbon Valley decorated graves on Decoration Day, held its Fourth of July picnic at the Central school on July 3, and kept Pioneer Day at the Pauline L.D.S. grounds.
Jailed at Malad and taken for a West Virginia fugitive, 1915
In 1915 Oneida County officers jailed L. E. Howell of South Arbon at Malad on a forgery charge; suspected of an old West Virginia murder, he was soon cleared of it.
A spring malady: Arbon Valley farmers buy cars, 1915
In 1915, a year after frost took most of the valley's wheat, Arbon farmers began buying cars; by June the South Arbon column counted about fifteen in the valley.
A seminary student's summer in Arbon Valley, 1915
In 1915 Robert W. Sturges, a New York seminary student, spent four months as pastor of the Congregational churches at Arbon and Highland, then wrote about the valley.
Homesteads on the mountain ranges: Arbon Valley in 1915
In 1915 the *American Falls Press* recorded Arbon Valley homesteaders filing in Knox Canyon and on the ranges, drilling wells, building houses and selling out.
Elmira and Delone Smith, two homestead daughters at Summit
Two daughters of the Summit homesteader E. G. Smith, as the 1915 South Arbon columns saw them and as their obituaries remembered them seventy years on.
Red suits and Sunday ball: Arbon Valley baseball, 1915
In 1915 Pauline, Central, Crystal and the "Daytonites" of South Arbon played Sunday baseball, and Pauline took the field in red suits paid for with the help of a dance.
Logs at the mill: Arbon Valley's building year of 1915
In 1915 the Arbon columns of the American Falls Press followed the valley's canyon sawmills through a busy season and the new houses that went up across the valley.
When Bannock Valley was cattle range, 1879–1909
How the papers saw Bannock Valley as stock range, from the killing winter of 1879–80 and the stockmen of 1888 to the sheep trails of 1903 and 1909.