A new road in a dry year: Arbon Valley, 1919

In the spring of 1919 Arbon Valley's new highway district set to work on the valley road along Bannock Creek. By midsummer the valley was in a drought. The American Falls Press reported both, and in August a Salt Lake paper put them together: with the drought cutting Power County's crops, it said, the road work was to go to farmers and workmen living in each district.

A district of its own

Arbon Valley, the old Bannock Valley, had been in Oneida County until 1913 and was now in Power County, with its south end still in Oneida. On June 12, 1918, voters polling at the Bannock Center school house voted unanimously to create Highway District No. 3, a road district with its own commissioners and bonds. That fall a $50,000 bond issue for the district was declared carried; the Pauline precinct had voted for it 56 to 10, and the Arbon precinct's count is not given.

On April 14, 1919, the district's chairman, J. E. Keeler, and its secretary, William Allard, called for bids to gravel fifteen miles of wagon road running south along Bannock Creek. The Arbon column of April 18 said a crew stationed near the Pauline bridge had begun on the steep hill there and would soon do away with a narrow ledge over the creek that had been dangerous. Ground had been bought from Mr. Bolingbroke so the road could run straight through, without the curve from the north to the bridge. The column does not give his first name; the Bolingbroke family were Pauline pioneers.

On May 2 the Press reported that Duke Sandstrum of American Falls had the contract for graveling the Arbon Valley road and would use trucks instead of horses, possibly among the first motor trucks on record in the valley.

Two trucks lost

On a Tuesday afternoon, probably June 10, two of the contractors' trucks, loaded with lumber and gasoline, burned to the ground near Arbon. John Schatz had stopped to drain his gas tank, the Press said, and the driver ahead came back and pulled up alongside; a spark from the exhaust was thought to have lit the gasoline, and both trucks "became a mass of flames." The drivers barely escaped. The paper of June 20 reported the settlement:

John Schatz and J. P. Sandstrom received an adjustment of $7500 Monday from Brown Moench, Insurance agents, to cover the loss of their two auto trucks which were lost by fire on the new highway under construction between Arbon and American Falls.
Schatz and Sandstrom are the contractors for the new highway, and their work has been delayed considerably pending the adjustment of the loss. They expect to replace them shortly now with two new trucks.

Sandstrom was probably the Duke Sandstrum of the May contract; the papers spell the name three ways.

The dry summer

The American Falls weather observer recorded the last spring rain on May 29, and his entry for the next month read: "June, 1919. Precipitation, none." The heat reached 101 degrees on June 25. A little rain did reach the valley: in mid-June the Logan Republican reported Orval Mikkelson of Arbon, visiting Hyde Park, Utah, telling of "a refreshing shower, doing much good to their grain."

On July 4 the grain men at American Falls still had hope for the fall grain, sown the autumn before, whose roots had broken through the hardpan to moisture, and C. Y. Wilson of the Northern Grain Company said the Rockland and Arbon valleys were standing the drought. But much of the Roy and Crystal valleys was in spring grain, which would not make anything, the Press said, unless a good rain came.

It did not come in time. When harvest began at the end of July, the Arbon column reported short grain with few kernels in a head. It said "most of the spring grain that didn't freeze burned up"; the fall grain had burned too, hay and feed were scarce, and "there is no pasture." A week later the Pauline correspondent wrote that those who had threshed had got no more than ten bushels, some not much over two, and that much spring grain would not be worth cutting:

It is almost impossible for the farmers to get hay to do their harvest work let alone get feed for winter. There was a nice rain fell here last week which has made the roads better, settled the dust and refreshed the air. It came too late to do crops any good.

"A plentiful rain came again this week," the Pauline column reported on August 22, and farmers were thinking of fall plowing. On September 5 the Arbon column told of one of the hardest rainstorms in years: "Everything in the low places and hollows was on the move."

Roads as relief

Early in August the Blackfoot Idaho Republican reported that Idaho's commissioner of public works had designated a state highway from Pocatello to Arbon, to be extended on to Oneida County: the valley's first state highway.

On August 25 the Salt Lake Herald-Republican printed a roundup of road building in southeastern Idaho, written from Rockland. Over in Arbon Valley, across the mountains to the east, it said, a highway district was building a graded road lengthwise through the valley, from the Fort Hall Indian Reservation to the Oneida County line. The valley was all wheat, and long hauls over poor roads to the elevators had been the rule. The drought had cut Power County's yields so badly that work had to be found for the farmers, so they could provide for their families and their livestock. The highway commissioners meant to hire only farmers and workmen living within their own districts, so that residents would have money when the time came to plant the next crop.

The article dealt mostly with the Rockland district and does not say how many valley men found work on the Arbon road; neither do the Press reports found for 1919. The spring gravel contract, at least, had gone to an American Falls man.

Afterward

In July 1921 the Salt Lake Telegram reported that the Arbon Valley highway district had lost its available cash in the failure of the Bannock bank. It had expected about $2,000 for road maintenance that year, with the wheat hauling ahead. Allard's annual report showed fourteen miles of graded and graveled road in the district, and six miles of new road built in 1920.

The article as printed

American Falls Press, June 20, 1919, page 8. Transcribed from the page scan.

TRUCK FIRE LOSS ADJUSTED.
John Schatz and J. P. Sandstrom received an adjustment of $7500 Monday from Brown & Moench, insurance agents, to cover the loss of their two auto trucks which were lost by fire on the new highway under construction between Arbon and American Falls.
Schatz and Sandstrom are the contractors for the new highway, and their work has been delayed considerably pending the adjustment of the loss. They expect to replace them shortly now with two new trucks.

On this site: the drought of 1919, which tells how the dry year helped drive families from the valley, and the area history of Pauline and West Fork.