In the 1920s the mail from Pocatello reached Arbon Valley over the mountains: up Mink Creek canyon, across the divide into the Crystal country, and on to Pauline and Arbon. Between 1924 and 1929 the papers reported tax complaints at Crystal, a mail stage that went into the creek, and a county's plea for money for the canyon road.
The divide was a county line. Pocatello and the canyon were in Bannock County; Arbon Valley had been in Oneida County until 1913 and was now in Power County, governed from American Falls. A traveler who went "over the top of Mink creek divide," the American Falls Press explained in 1917, entered Power County. That September the paper's roving writer rode up the canyon with the mail carrier Lorin Bailey and found the road in stretches "so narrow that if two outfits ever meet one of them will have to back up to a wider part of the road."
A road district at Crystal
Crystal had a road district of its own. On May 27, 1918, its voters approved a Crystal Highway District by 63 votes to none, about a little over two weeks before Arbon's voters formed Highway District No. 3. The Crystal district ran east to the Bannock County line, where the road came over from Pocatello.
By the spring of 1924 some of its taxpayers were unhappy. On April 3 the Press reported complaints that the district's affairs had been run without public supervision, that no legal election of its officials appeared to have been held since 1918, and that those in office had been appointed. The paper went on:
The treasury has continually been in a more or less depleted state and some of the taxpayers in the district at least, feel that the affairs of the district should be run along more conventional lines. Crystal Highway District now pays the largest school and road tax of any section of the county. The mail service is reported to be quite unsatisfactory and the general feeling seems to be that action should be taken to stabilize business affairs of the community.
The grand jury of the previous fall, the paper added, had recommended an audit of the district's books, but by report it had not been done. The tax complaint had figures behind it: in 1922 the Press had found the highest total levy of any of the county's common (rural) school districts, 35.6 mills, in two districts within the Crystal Highway District. No later report of an audit or an election has been found.
The mail came out from Pocatello by car and truck. According to the Daniels family history on this site, Theo Daniels of Pauline had carried the Pocatello–Crystal–Pauline–Arbon mail since 1922. In late March 1924 the Pauline schoolchildren, who sent their own column to the Press, reported two mishaps on the mail run: "Jewel Horten took the mail to Pocatello, March 17th. On the way back the car tipped over hurting his arm." Two days later, by the column's dating, Daniels's truck "broke down coming from Pocatello with the mail."
The stage in Mink Creek
By 1925 a motor stage ran between Pocatello and the valley, carrying the Arbon mail. On Wednesday, September 2, 1925, on its way to Crystal, it went over the side of the road and rolled down an embankment into Mink Creek; a defective steering rod was blamed. Mrs. Mose Fannin of Crystal was badly cut and her daughter Ethel's arm was broken, and the Deseret News reported that the baby, thrown into the creek, was pulled out at once by his sister. The driver, whose name cannot be read with certainty in either paper, was not hurt. The wreck has its own Stories entry, the Arbon stage goes off the road into Mink Creek.
Six miles through the forest
In December 1926 W. H. Hall, Bannock County's road supervisor, laid before the county commissioners his correspondence about new sections of the highway through the Cache National Forest on Mink Creek. He had asked H. W. Gregory, the state director of highways, to do everything possible toward a six-mile stretch through the forest, and if money could be had through the bureau of public works or the national forest service, Bannock County would cooperate on the section from south of Mink Creek to the forest boundary.
The work was badly needed, Hall said, according to a Pocatello report in the Salt Lake Tribune: the roads had suffered from "the heavy hauling of grain from the Arbon valley" and the Bannock Creek country, and the star mail routes, carried by contractors, were another reason to finish quickly. Whether the six miles were built is not reported in the papers read for this post.
Other ways out
Other towns took up the valley's roads too. On October 12, 1925, the new board of the American Falls chamber of commerce put on its winter program "the improvement of the mountain road to Arbon valley which is used for light traffic." That road ran by way of Sunbeam, a district in the foothills a few miles east of American Falls, and the meeting heard that it "can be repaired sufficiently for light travel with the expenditure of a comparatively small sum." No report that the work was done has been found.
Much of the wheat went north across the Fort Hall Reservation to Michaud, on the Oregon Short Line railroad; as early as 1917 big trucks hauled it there from the grain platforms at Pauline. In January 1929 the new board of the Pocatello chamber of commerce took up plans for a highway between Michaud and the Arbon Valley and named a committee, among them O. R. Baum and a Mr. Burton, to study it. On March 19 Congressman Addison T. Smith met at Judge Baum's home with the chamber's president, Fred A. Burton, its secretary, Paul V. Nash, and C. A. Valentine. Besides irrigation for the Michaud Flats, they discussed "getting a government appropriation to improve the Michaud to Arbon road," and Smith agreed to work with the local committee.
The papers read for this post do not say whether any of these roads got their money. In March 1934 Idaho's governor, C. Ben Ross, was to meet the federal Indian Service at Pocatello about a road across the reservation to give the valley access to markets; the old one, he said, had been broken down by the valley's yearly wheat haul.
The article as printed
American Falls Press, April 3, 1924, page 1. Transcribed from the page scan.
CRYSTAL PEOPLE
Are Dissatisfied With Administration of Highway Affairs—Now Pay Highest Road and School Tax in County With Little to Show for Expenditures.
Complaints have come in from Crystal highway district as to the administration of the business affairs of the district and the fact that no public supervision of the district has been given the taxpayers in that section of the county. It appears that there has [illegible] been a legal election held for highway district officals since the district was organized in 1918. Officials who have the offices since that time have been appointed.
The treasury has continually been in a more or less depleted state and some of the taxpayers in the district at least, feel that the affairs of the district should be run along more conventional lines. Crystal Highway District now pays the largest school and road tax of any section of the county. The mail service is reported to be quite unsatisfactory and the general feeling seems to be that action should be taken to stabilize business affairs of the community. The grand jury that was called last fall recommended that an audit be made of the Crystal Highway books but this, according to reports, has not been done.
On this site: the first mail route from Pocatello, Lorin Bailey's route; the first state highway, on the 1919 Pocatello–Arbon highway and the valley's highway district; the first stage lines, on the Fannins' Crystal homestead as a stage station; and the history of Pauline and West Fork.
Sources
- American Falls Press, October 3, 1912, page 1
- American Falls Press, September 18, 1917, page 3
- American Falls Press, October 9, 1917, page 3
- American Falls Press, November 13, 1917, page 3
- American Falls Press, June 25, 1918, page 3
- American Falls Press, July 30, 1918, page 1
- American Falls Press, September 21, 1922, page 4
- American Falls Press, March 27, 1924, page 2
- American Falls Press, April 3, 1924, page 1
- Salt Lake Tribune, September 4, 1925, page 9
- Deseret News, September 4, 1925, page 14
- American Falls Press, October 15, 1925, page 1
- Salt Lake Tribune, December 11, 1926, page 11
- Salt Lake Tribune, January 4, 1929, page 11
- Salt Lake Tribune, March 20, 1929, page 9
- Salt Lake Telegram, March 20, 1934, page 7
- Daniels family history, on this site