B. O. Kelley and the Bannock Creek bridge at Pauline, 1918
Early on December 23, 1918, B. O. Kelley, hauling Pauline wheat for the Zaring Grain Company, drove his truck off the Bannock Creek bridge at Pauline and was killed.
1918 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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No doctor within forty miles: influenza at Arbon, autumn 1918
In October 1918 the Spanish influenza reached Arbon Valley weeks after its only doctor had left; the American Falls Press followed the sick, the dead and the helpers week by week.
The Humphreys of Crystal, and the sons who left the dry farm
Horace and Roy Humphrey farmed at Arbon and Crystal from the 1910s, and Horace's Arbon-born sons later worked as far away as Barrow, Alaska, and Promontory, Utah.
A herd district for Arbon Valley, July 1918
In July 1918 the Power County commissioners took up a petition from Arbon Valley residents for a herd district, and with no one objecting, created it on July 27.
Half a million bushels and no railroad: the 1918 wheat haul
In 1918 Arbon Valley expected nearly half a million bushels of wheat with the railroad 25 to 35 miles away, and its call for motor trucks reached the national trade press.
Four Nunnelley sisters, nurses from Summit, 1913–1920
Four daughters of W. A. Nunnelley of Summit became nurses; the papers followed them through a Navy enlistment, the 1918–19 influenza and a diploma at Logan in 1920.
Arbon grain "not damaged in the least": Pocatello answers back, 1918
In June 1918 the Pocatello Tribune called the Nonpartisan League's charge that Pauline wheat had rotted "rank fiction," a month after its own report that some of it had spoiled.
The Pauline wheat pile and the Nonpartisan League, 1917–1918
Wheat bought in 1917 sat in an open pile at a Pauline grain platform into 1918, and the Nonpartisan League took its spoiling to Herbert Hoover.
When the Bannock Creek lands were allotted, 1911–1922
As the Fort Hall lands on lower Bannock Creek were allotted, a new road was built to Michaud, Pauline farmers leased allotments, and by 1922 inherited allotments were for sale.
The Red Cross War Fund Night at Arbon, Pauline and Crystal, 1918
On May 20, 1918, Arbon, Pauline and Crystal opened the Red Cross war fund drive, with a cake auction at Arbon and Crystal's quota met in a single night.
Wintering out: Arbon Valley families leave and come home, 1917–18
In the fall of 1917 many Arbon Valley families left their farms for the winter, a few stayed by choice, and in March 1918 the valley columns counted them home.
The women who led Arbon Valley's Relief Societies
The papers caught the valley's Relief Societies at their meetings, socials and dances, and obituaries printed decades later name the women who had led them.
Old Jim Hill: Arbon Valley's war on a rolling weed, 1917–1918
In 1917 and 1918 Arbon Valley's wheat farmers fought Jim Hill mustard, a rolling tumbleweed, and the Press's roving farm writer let the weed tell its own side.
Turkey Red at $1.81: Arbon Valley's wartime wheat of 1917
In 1917, the year America went to war, Arbon Valley's dry-farm wheat came through hail, heat and mustard to a thin harvest that sold at wartime prices of up to $1.95 a bushel.