On Tuesday, March 11, 1924, a delegation from Arbon Valley came to Pocatello to talk about leaving Power County for Bannock County. The next day the Pocatello Tribune columnist Alfred F. Grubb gave the visit one paragraph at the end of his column, the last of whose three headlines was "Arbon Valley Desires to Join Bannock." It is the only report of the visit found so far, and it names none of the men who made the trip.
The valley had chosen its county only a few years before. Until 1913 it was part of Oneida County, governed from Malad. Between 1908 and 1911 Arbon voted three times to go with a new county around American Falls, and Power County was created in 1913 (how Arbon voted to join Power County). Eleven years later some in the valley were looking the other way, toward Pocatello.
What the column said
According to Grubb, the delegates consulted Claude Bistline and other prominent Pocatello business men about "bringing Power county within the folds of Bannock county." He doubted they would succeed right away, but he thought they were right to try, and he gave his reasons. Power County, he wrote, had a vast stretch of untillable land, fringed by two promising areas: the country around the American Falls dam and Arbon Valley, which "has fine farms and prospects of oil which are alluring." Under the tax system those small fringes had to pay for road building across long stretches of "dreary waste." The county also faced building a courthouse at a probable cost of at least $100,000, and had already paid to move the town of American Falls out of the way of the dam's coming reservoir. With Pocatello marked as the trade center for the whole region, he concluded, the "provident men" were wise to seek an alliance with it.
Two cautions belong with the column. The reasoning is Grubb's: he does not say which of these arguments the delegates themselves made. And his wording is not quite clear about what was proposed. The headline says Arbon Valley wanted to join Bannock, but the paragraph speaks of bringing Power County into Bannock, and the costs he lists, the courthouse and the moving of American Falls, were burdens of the whole county. Whether the delegates wanted only the valley to change counties, or Power County as a whole to merge with Bannock, the column does not settle.
The valley in 1924
Grubb's "prospects of oil" were real enough to the valley in 1924: the Gem State Petroleum Co. was drilling beside Arbon's Central school and drawing visitors (the Gem State oil well). Taxes were a live complaint too. On April 3, three weeks after the delegation's visit, the American Falls Press printed complaints from the Crystal Highway District, on the east side of the valley, about how its affairs had been run:
Crystal Highway District now pays the largest school and road tax of any section of the county.
No source connects the Crystal complaints with the March delegation, and none has been found that tells what came of the delegation. Power County went ahead with its courthouse. In September 1925 the commissioners, among them T. B. Evans of Arbon, ordered the county jail's fixtures moved into "the new building" at American Falls (Perry Lusk and T. B. Evans on the county board).
The idea again, 1939
Fifteen years later the idea came up once more, briefly. When the Bannock County commissioners met in Pocatello on Monday, February 20, 1939, one of them, W. H. Jensen, told of a recent visit from Roy Lindley, a Power County commissioner. His news was that the idea of moving into Bannock County had come up among some of the people of Arbon Valley. The Tribune reported nothing more: no names, no reasons, and no answer from either board.
Roy Lindley was very probably Roy D. Lindley of Arbon, the valley's member of the Power County board (Roy Lindley and the golden eagle). In January 1931 the Tribune had named a Roy Lindley as chairman of the Power County commissioners, working with Pocatello's chamber of commerce for federal aid on the Bannock Creek road. At harvest, the paper noted, valley farmers took much of their wheat to Pocatello for shipping by that route, and Indian farmers on the reservation stood to gain from a better road as well (Arbon's wheat road across the reservation). This site had placed his years on the board at probably 1929 to 1935; the 1939 report shows him as a commissioner again, or still, in 1939.
Arbon Valley never did change counties. It is in Power County today. Who went to Pocatello in 1924, and who made the suggestion in 1939, is not known.
On this site: the valley's commissioners are listed on the Evans family page, and the valley's roads to Pocatello are followed in the Mink Creek road post and the wheat road post.
The article as printed
Pocatello Tribune, March 12, 1924, page 3. Transcribed from the page scan. The item is the last in Alfred F. Grubb's column, which ran under three headlines; the column's other items, which do not concern the valley, are not transcribed.
Arbon Valley Desires to Join Bannock
BY ALFRED F. GRUBB
The delegation which came from Arbon valley yesterday and consulted Claude Bistline and other prominent business men relative to the matter of bringing Power county within the folds of Bannock county may not meet with immediate success. Power county has a vast stretch of untillable land, fringed by an area embracing the American Falls dam which gives wonderful promise of high development. Then the Arbon valley, again a restricted area, has fine farms and prospects of oil which are alluring. This small fringe must, in the system of taxation, bear the burden of road building, over long stretches of what is now dreary waste, must have imposed upon it a seemingly inequitable tax. So sensing all this and knowing that with the coming of the American Falls dam, with the creation of that wonderful system of irrigation and the marking of Pocatello as the logical, inevitable center of trade therefor, with the confronting necessity of taxing themselves to build a court house at probable expense of at least $100,000, with the expense to which they have already gone of removing American Falls from the pathway of the soon-coming lake to the adjacent hills, the provident men of that section are wisely seeking alliance with this the inevitable and dominant city of this entire section.