On October 26, 1917, the American Falls Press gave a long article, headed "Arbon's First Settler," to David J. Bowen, whose ranch lay at the foot of Bowen's Peak on the west side of Arbon Valley. Its roving farm writer, who signed himself "The Pilgrim," had heard Bowen tell how the valley's settlement began.
When Bowen came, the valley was called Bannock Valley and lay in Oneida County; Power County was created in 1913. The Pilgrim began:
Some people who have been in the county less than a score of years count themselves as among the pioneers. In a measure they are, but they are not in a class with David J. Bowen of Arbon, who was one of three men to begin the making of a home there twenty-four years ago.
Over the mountain from Samaria
Bowen was born in Salt Lake City in 1861, the son of a Welsh father who came west in the first handcart company of 1856. He grew up on Henderson Creek in Malad Valley and at Samaria, married Mary S. Smith, a native of Spanish Fork, in 1884, and after three unfavorable years in Wyoming's Salt River country was back at Samaria by 1892.
In June 1892 he made his first trip into Bannock Valley with S. D. and H. E. Davis of Samaria. The digitized text is scrambled here, but apparently S. D. Davis had been there before with a Spanish teacher from the Brigham Young academy at Provo, who had reported a running stream in one of the canyons. When Bowen found that the stream, later called Knox Creek, was "a permanent water course and not a mere freshet from melting snow," he staked a claim.
The land was not yet surveyed, so he held it by squatter's right. The Pilgrim dates the claim to 1892; Mrs. E. A. Logan's history of the valley, printed in the Press in March 1917, has Bowen and others staking their land in 1893. A homestead patent to him, dated April 17, 1907 and probably for this land, is in the site's Bowen family album.
The cabin of 1893
In the fall of 1893 Bowen built "the first settler's log cabin erected in Arbon valley north of the west fork of Bannock creek," of quaking aspen cut in Knox Canyon. Cowboys had put up shacks near the creek bottoms, but those were not settlers' cabins, "and to Mr. Bowen belongs the credit of being the pioneer rancher of the valley."
The family lived in the cabin three summers, wintering in Samaria. In the third season they raised enough hay and grain to winter their stock and stayed; Bowen's brother-in-law, W. T. Hawkins, and his family had the cabin that winter, while the Bowens lived in a log building later used as a stable.
Other families have their own claims to the first house. The Andersen accounts give it to Otto Andersen's log house of 1893, and on November 23, 1917, the Pilgrim found a building put up in 1893 by Andrew Anderson, father of the Anderson brothers, still in use as an ice house on H. W. Anderson's ranch; these are probably Andrew Andersen of Mendon and his son Henry Waldemar. On November 6 he wrote that J. N. Arbon had farmed in the valley since coming with his father, George Arbon, in 1892.
Water, mail and church
Work on the Bannock Valley Irrigation project began in the spring of 1893. Bowen and a Davis, probably S. D., did all the surveying "with a common spirit level," and by 1917 the main canal ran more than eight miles, to the Jesse Ward ranch.
In 1898 the valley's first post office opened in a larger log house Bowen had built, with Bowen as postmaster. It was named for George Arbon as "the oldest in point of years" of the settlers, and the valley later took the name too. For six months there was no mail contract, and patrons had to "take turn about in carrying mail from Malad, 35 miles away." Fred Paine was the first carrier the settlers hired, and in the spring of 1899 the first government contract went to an Evans whose initials the digitized text garbles, possibly Dave Evans, whom his family remembers as the first carrier. Mrs. Logan's history instead puts a young Fred Payne first, carrying from Samaria. The Pilgrim went on:
In those days the mail was carried on the saddle or in a wagon, but now the mail is brought in by automobile three times a week. Mr. Bowen relates that the cancellation for the first quarter of his term as postmaster amounted to $1.32.
By 1917, said the postmistress, Louie Leavitt, cancellations and money-order fees brought in well over $100 a quarter.
In 1900 the settlers became a branch of the Samaria Ward of the Latter-day Saints, with Bowen as presiding elder. A garbled sentence then mentions the Arbon Ward of 1908 and says Bowen was made bishop "and holds that responsible position now." Joseph N. Arbon was the first bishop in 1908; Bowen succeeded Ed Davis, as the Deseret Evening News reported on January 6, 1917, and a Deseret News church notice of October 21, 1944, gives his term as 1916 to 1922. In 1917 he was the bishop, though not the first.
The ranch and the old cabin
Bowen owned 320 acres under the peak "named Bowen's peak in his honor," and farmed it with his son Brigham, whose 640 acres adjoined it. His first wife, Mary, had died in May 1905; in 1912 he married Maggie Young of Perry, Utah. He called the winter just past "the longest and the most severe" he had known there. The valley lies beside the Fort Hall Reservation, and Bowen said the Indians who hunted and camped near his ranch had always been "his good friends."
In "Along the Highways," on the same page, the Pilgrim wrote that Bowen was thinking of removing the old cabin, and pleaded for it to stand as one of the historic cabins of the region. The row of tall trees before it had grown, he wrote, "from little sprigs."
It has stood up there at the foot of the mountain since 1893 and surely is entitled to its reward of being classed among the historical structures of the Gem state, having witnessed the transformation of a great domain of erstwhile sagebrush flats into numerous productive farms.
Whether Bowen kept the cabin, the papers read for this post do not say. He lived until 1955, as his portrait page on this site records.
The article as printed
American Falls Press, October 26, 1917, page 3, in the farm department "With Power County's Farms and Farmers," by "The Pilgrim." Transcribed from the scanned text of the page; the page image was not consulted, so the order of the headlines and the paragraph breaks follow the scanned text, and words lost where its columns run together are marked. The phrase about the elderberry tree borrows Topsy, the enslaved child of Uncle Tom's Cabin, a figure much used in caricature in its day; it is kept as printed.
ARBON'S FIRST SETTLER
IS A GOOD FARMER
D. J. Bowen, Builder of First Cabin, and First Postmaster, Still a Resident of the Valley.
Some people who have been in the county less than a socre of years count themselves as among the pioneers. In a measure they are, but they are not in a class with David J. Bowen of Arbon, who was one of three men to begin the making of a home there twenty-four years ago.
From nearly any point of Arbon valley north of the west fork of Bannock creek can be seen a row of tall Lombardy poplar trees at the foot of Bowen's peak, at the west edge of the valley. These tall trees mark the home of David J. Bowen, the pioneer settler and rancher of Arbon valley, and on the home site still stands the little log cabin erected by him in the fall of 1893. This rancher is a descendant of the pioneers who came to Utah in the years from 1847 to 1860 and being a true son of these men he followed their precepts to the letter and has himself done "his bit" and more in developing an unproductive area into a productive tract and causing others to follow his lead.
Mr. Bowen owns 320 acres of land three miles southwest of Arbon postoffice, at the foot of the eminence of the Bannock range which has been named Bowen's peak in his honor. Of this acreage all but 70 acres is broken up, and grain and alfalfa growing is the main object on the ranch, which embraces the original pioneer claim of Arbon valley, taken up as a squatter's right on unsurveyed land in 1892.
Cornering on Mr. Bowen's ranch his son Brigham, owns a ranch of 640 acres, filed on in 1915, and father and son operate the entire 960 acres in conjunction. Of the son's ranch about 40 acres are in cultivation, the balance being principally pasture land extending well up the slope of the mountain to the west. The altitude of the tillable lands on these ranches is around 5500 feet and the grain is all raised by dry farm methods, while the alfalfa fields are irrigated.
Good Yield for Off Year.
This year father and son had about 100 acres seeded to wheat, 80 acres in Turkey Red and 20 acres in Bluestem. The winter wheat gave an average of 13 bushels and the spring wheat of 15 bushels per acre; from a field of volunteer wheat six bushels per acre were threshed. The season of 1917 has not been propitious to wheat growers and Mr. Bowen and his son are satisfied with the results obtained in such an adverse year. In past years Mr. Bowen has harvested excellent crops of wheat and other cereals on his ranch. In 1913 he harvested an average of [illegible] bushels per acre from 140 acres of Turkey Red, and the hauling of wheat to market continued throughout the winter following. Oats and barley that year also gave fine yields, one patch of seven acres of barley going 50 bushels per acre.
Mr. Bowen will have at least 100 acres on his own ranch and 40 acres on his son's ranch in wheat in 1918. Owing to the encroachment of weeds he has decided that spring seeding will be resorted to in order to overcome the menace. Of course, some of the land will be plowed in the fall and some of it will be summer fallow, but the land will in the main be cultivated thoroughly in the spring and then seeded. Like other farmers, Mr. Bowen realizes the futility of preparing summer fallow in the best manner possible, expending time and money [illegible] only to raise a crop of weeds in the spring. Cooperation of all farmers in spring plowing, or spring cultivation and seeding of summer fallow and fall plowed land, is absolutely necessary to get rid of the masses of weeds, especially Jim Hill mustard, which are contesting for supremacy with the cereals. It is only in the last three years that mustard has appeared on Mr. Bowen's ranch, and the owner has fought it persistently with harrow and hoe. He, too, has had to contend with the conditions brought about by owners of homesteads abandoning the same to weeds of all sorts instead of cultivating them.
Irrigated Alfalfa Does Well.
On this ranch 25 acres are devoted to the growing of alfalfa, 15 acres planted in 1906 and the balance in 1911. These fields are irrigated and always yield two crops and in some years three, the average tonnage per acre from all cuttings being from three to three and a half tons. The water for the irrigation of these fields is taken from Knox creek, the rights to the stream being owned by an association of water users. The big alfalfa stacks in the hay yard of this ranch are the best evidence that irrigated alfalfa does exceedingly well in this mountain country. Mr. Bowen has 20 acres additional all prepared and ready for seeding to alfalfa next spring.
The garden on this ranch always produces early and late vegetables in bountiful yields, potatoes doing especially well. Cabbages have been raised here by Mrs. Bowen that turned the scales at 10 pounds. This year a hail storm beat the potato vines to the ground, but the second growth produced a good crop nevertheless. In all the years that Mr. Bowen has lived on his ranch the hail of early July this year has never been even remotely approached in severity and destructiveness. Not only the gardens, but orchard trees and the grain fields were injured. Notwithstanding the unwelcome visitation the garden, under the care of Mrs. Bowen, has yielded plenty for the household. Berry bushes added their yield to the vegetables and the nearby canyons were full of wild fruits this year. In the orchard stands a big elderberry tree—tree is nearer correct than bush—which, like Topsy, "just growed." Mr. Bowen has watched its growth from year to year, and declines to venture a guess as to the quantity of berries which have been picked from its branches in the course of years. The berries are preserved and used in a variety of ways. Up in Buck Wright canyon, two miles to the south, elderberries grow in profusion, and each year Mrs. Bowen gathers and preserves quantities of them.
Plants First Apple Trees.
The first apple trees in the orchard were set out in 1896, and from the first year that they were in bearing have always given a fair yield, and in many seasons the yield was far beyond the average of a mountain orchard. This orchard has been carefully guarded against all sorts of enemies, and its growth has been aided by irrigation from the beginning. Probably the most injurious enemy the trees had to be guarded against are the mountain hares, and as a protection Mr. Bowen has surrounded the orchard with a wire netting fence, but last winter the snow was so deep that the hares managed to get over the fence now and then. The fruit trees have grown to immense size and have been kept pruned and trimmed down, so that they present a fine symmetrical appearance. Besides apple trees the orchard contains cherry and plum trees, giving a variety of fruits best adapted to this section.
The shade trees just east of the home site were set out in 1895, and consist of Lombardy poplars and elm trees, the latter a hardwood variety. All of them have grown straight, except one, and Mr. Bowen has never arrived at a satisfactory conclusion just why these trees all grew straight. When he first located on his claim he thought that the mountain just west of his land would act as a breaker of the breezes. That theory has not proven correct for when the wind blows down that mountain it frequently takes on a velocity that causes natives and strangers to refer to it in very uncomplimentary terms. Just the same, the shade and orchard trees grew straight and trim, and they stand up there against the mountain as a land mark and a credit to Pioneer Bowen.
Gives Good Cultivation.
Mr. Bowen has by experience learned that to be successful in dry farming the soil must be prepared correctly. For summer fallow he plows not less than eight inches deep, and the deeper the ground is plowed the better results are obtained. The harrow is used to create the mulch needed [illegible] conserve the moisture, and when the weeds show up the harrow and disc are depended upon to eradicate them. Just before drilling seed in summer fallow the harrow is brought into use again. If the ground is moist enough Mr. Bowen always seeds his fall grain in September. By doing his summer fallowing early in the spring he succeeds in retaining all the moisture required and conserves it by using the harrow unsparingly. After drilling in winter wheat he does not use the harrow again until in the spring; as soon as the ground is dry enough he takes the harrow over the growing grain and this method helps the grain to [illegible] For fall plowing for spring seeding [illegible] six to eight inches deep and [illegible] the rougher the land is during [illegible] winter the more snow it [illegible] Mr. Bowen has observed that [illegible] from stubble or sagebrush [illegible] blown clear of snow during the [illegible] with a vastly reduced growing crop in the summer as a natural [illegible] likes to see rough clods on [illegible] plowed land during the winter, [illegible] the clods hold [illegible] the more snow can be held the better will be the moisture reserve in the spring. In the spring the fall plowing is gone over with the harrow and thoroughly cultivated. After the seed is drilled in the land is left alone.
For spring plowing for immediate seeding Mr. Bowen plows six inches deep, harrowing right after the plowing, and drilling while the ground [illegible] moist. Deep plowing and constant use of the harrow are the greatest aids in the conservation of moisture and the production of good crops.
For farm work Mr. Bowen prefers Percheron horses and his work bunch shows the Percheron and [illegible] strains to be predominant. For road [illegible] of work, however, this rancher believes that a lighter horse of from 1000 to 1200 pounds is preferable. For the long distances to town one day and back the next the heavy draft horse [illegible] the best adapted. This rancher [illegible] horses, keeping up [illegible] supply needed for the farm and [illegible]. He owns two high grade Percheron brood mares and his son owns one and the bunch of horses is being graded to that standard.
At present six cows of mixed stock are being milked and besides supplying the home with cream and butter, some [illegible] the latter is marketed. From 15 to [illegible] pounds of butter are produced weekly. Mr. Bowen intends to increase the dairy herd and as he prefers the Durham to any other, believing it to be the best dual purpose cow, he will eventually have a herd of pure bred speciments of this strain. A considerable number of young calves are being raised on the ranch.
Hogs are being raised for home consumption only at present, but in the past they have been profitably raised for market shipment. The Duroc-Jersey breed is favored, its large frame and easy fattening qualifications being the deciding factors. Mr. Bowen has no doubt that with proper equipment as to fences, pasture, feeding arrangements, etc., hog raising for market shipment can be profitably done on any ranch in the county.
Mr. Bowen is a firm advocate of the doctrine that every rancher should have a bunch of sheep on his place and had made a start with four head. One night coyotes made a raid on the little flock and only one sheep was left the next morning. Coyotes are plentiful on the slopes and canyons of the mountains and they are very bold. Mr. Bowen will again install a flock of sheep on his ranch, but provision will be made for their safeguarding during the night.
Mrs. Bowen has in her charge a flock of 150—old and young—mixed stock chickens and besides supplying the home with plenty of eggs a good revenue is derived from the sale of eggs. Mrs. Bowen has a method of preserving chicken meat which always provides plenty of fresh meat in this home. The surplus stock of the flock is killed, dressed and the meat with a little salt is placed in a bottle, hermetically sealed, and then boiled for four hours. The older the fowl the longer it should be boiled. Meat thus treated can be kept for an indefinite period, it having been kept in the household from November until June. Whenever chicken meat is wanted Mrs. Bowen goes to the cellar and gets a bottle for the table. When once the bottle is opened the entire contents should be used, as it is not safe to re-seal the bottle.
Mr. Bowen is a native of Salt Lake City, Utah, born in the year 1861. His father, David Bowen, a native of Wales, crossed the plains in the first handcart company of 1856 and came direct to Salt Lake City. His mother, Annie Shackleton, a native of England, came to America in 1860, crossed the plains in an ox team emigrant train the same year, and also came direct to Salt Lake City. The father died in 1910 and is laid to rest in Logan, Utah; the mother still resides in Logan, aged 77 years. David J. Bowen lived in Salt Lake City with his parents until 1869 in which year the family moved to Henderson creek, Malad valley, Idaho, the head of the family engaging in farming and stockraising. After seven years of residence there the family removed to Samaria, near Malad.
In 1884 David J. Bowen was married to Mary S. Smith, a native of Spanish Fork, Utah, and in 1888 they went to the Salt river country in Wyoming, the intention being to go into farming but the conditions were so unfavorable that after three years they returned to Spanish Fork, Utah, and in 1892 again took up residence at Samaria, Idaho. In June, 1892, Mr. Bowen made his first trip into what was then known as Bannock valley, now Arbon valley, accompanied by S. D. and H. E. Davis of Samaria. S. D. Davis had been in the district where Mr. Bowen's ranch is located [illegible] some time previous in company with [illegible] Spanish teacher at the Brigham Young academy in Provo, Utah, and this Spaniard had reported a running stream in one of the canyons of the mountain. When Mr. Bowen found that this stream—now known as Knox creek—was a permanent water course and not a mere freshet from melting snow, he staked out his claim on the unsurveyed land, [illegible] S. D. Davis, now an attorney of Malad, staked out a claim just to the north. Mr. Bowen lived on his claim and began improving it, building in the fall of 1893 the first settler's log cabin erected in Arbon valley north of the west fork of Bannock creek. Cowboys had built small shacks in the valley near the creek bottoms, but they were not settlers' cabins, and to Mr. Bowen belongs the credit of being the pioneer rancher of the valley. The logs for this cabin were cut from a quaken aspen grove in Knox canyon and the old cabin still stands on its original location.
The pioneer and his family lived in this cabin three summers, spending the winter months in Samaria. The third season enough hay and grain was grown to winter the stock and the family remained on the mountain ranch that winter. Mr. Bowen's brother-in-law, W. T. Hawkins, and his family stayed on the ranch that winter and occupied the cabin, while the owner and his family took up their quarters in a log structure now used as a stable.
Was First Postmaster.
In [illegible] a larger log cabin was erected and three or four years later another room was added to it, and this roomy and neat cabin is now occupied as the [illegible]. In this log cabin was installed the first postoffice of Arbon valley, with Mr. Bowen the first postmaster in 1898. David Bowen, E. H. Davis, George Arbon, J. R. Bailey, L. H. Evans, the Ward brothers and the Anderson brothers were the settlers then living in the vicinity, and George Arbon being the oldest in point of years the postoffice was named Arbon in his honor and subsequently the valley was also named after him. Mr. Bowen served as postmaster about a year and a half, J. R. Bailey succeeding him and serving [illegible] years. The government would not give a contract for carrying the mail, for six months requiring the patrons to take turn about in carrying mail from Malad, 35 miles away. Fred Paine being the first carrier hired by the settlers. In the spring of 1899 the government let a contract for the carrying of the mail, [illegible] Evans being the first official carrier. In those days the mail was carried on the saddle or in a wagon, but now the mail is brought in by automobile three times a week. Mr. Bowen relates that the cancellation for the first quarter of his term as postmaster amounted to $1.32. Miss Louie Leavitt, the present postmistress of Arbon, states that the quarterly revenue from cancellation and money order fees goes well over $100 now.
Mr. Bowen states that last winter was the longest and the most severe of any endured by him since he first located on his ranch. On the whole the winters have been endurable and the hardships occasioned by them has been not too severe. In all the years of his residence on the ranch the Indians have been his good friends, hunting and camping near his ranch and never causing any trouble.
Mr. Bowen comes from that part of Utah where irrigation is practiced in its most perfect form and he at first believed that dry farming in the mountain country was an impossibility. He stated to the Pilgrim that it was the mountain stream running down Knox canyon which decided him to locate on his claim. Notwithstanding his first belief, he has made good both as a dry farmer in the growing of grain and in the growing of irrigated alfalfa. The mountain stream of Knox canyon has for many years been put to use in irrigating alfalfa fields. Work on the Bannock Valley Irrigation project was started in the spring of 1893 and it was a full three years before any material benefit was derived from it. Mr. Bowen and [illegible] Davis did all the surveying and the drawing of the levels with a common spirit level. The main canal of this project is more than eight miles long, extending from a point a mile and a half up the canyon to the Jesse Ward ranch seven miles south of the canyon's mouth. The laterals of the system total between seven and eight miles in length. The big stacks of alfalfa on every ranch served by this irrigation system attest its worth to the farmers.
In [illegible] this district was organized into a branch of the Samaria ward of the L. D. S. church and Mr. Bowen was made presiding elder. In 1908 [illegible] Arbon ward was created and he [illegible] made bishop and holds that responsible position now. At all times he has taken an active interest in all affairs pertaining to the welfare of the community.
In May, 1905, Mrs. Bowen died and she is laid to rest in the cemetery at Samaria by the side of a little daughter. The children living are: Mrs. J. H. Smith of Arbon valley, Mrs. J. D. Price of Crystal, Mrs. J. E. Lorntzen of Preston, Idaho, Mrs. Charles Wood of Howell, Utah, Elizabeth and Ellen of Logan, Utah, Mary, residing at Malad with an aunt, J. D. Bowen of Arimo, Idaho, and Brigham Bowen, who has a ranch adjoining his father's and also is the rural mail carrier of Arbon.
In 1912 Mr. Bowen was married to Miss Maggie Young of Perry, Utah, like her husband a descendant of the early Utah pioneers. Her father, Thomas Young, and her mother, Mary Hay, crossed the plains as members of the handcart companies of the years between 1850 and 1860.
This pioneer of Arbon valley stated that he took the raw material of land and water, worked hard and incessantly, and succeeded in making from it a productive farm by hard and incessant work. The task was not easy nor was it lightly undertaken a quarter century ago, but that it was well done is the testimony of his friends and neighbors.