In the first week of August 1924 a smut explosion set fire to a threshing outfit on the Ray Hatfield place in Arbon Valley. The news went out by way of Malad. The Pocatello Tribune's Malad correspondent sent it in on August 9, and it ran the next day on the paper's Idaho State News page under the headline "Considerable Damage From Smut Explosion." The Ogden Standard-Examiner printed a shorter version on August 9.
The fire took the threshing machine, seventy-five sacks of wheat, a wagon, a derrick and the stack of grain still waiting to be threshed. The grain was not insured. The machine belonged to Clive Hatfield, and it was insured, but the report added that the policy, "it is said," did not cover the machinery while it was running. The correspondent called it the first fire reported from the grain fields of the county that year. Neither paper says whether anyone was hurt.
Smut, or bunt, is a fungus that turns wheat kernels into black dust, and, as this site's account of Henry Shandrew's clean wheat tells, it had become serious in the county in 1914, and 1915 brought a smutty harvest in the valley. In a threshing machine it could cause an explosion and fire. The Tribune closed with that warning: smut was not bad in the county that season, but where it existed it was reason to take every precaution. The valley had seen it happen before. In October 1915 the American Falls Press South Arbon column reported that the Sorenson brothers' machine had an explosion "caused by smut"; they put the fire out before it did serious damage and were back at work after a few hours of repairs.
Why did the news come from Malad, not American Falls? In November 1917 the Press described C. H. Hatfield's 160-acre ranch as lying "just over the line in Oneida county." The valley's south end straddled the line between Power and Oneida counties, and to a Malad correspondent "the county" meant Oneida. The papers do not say where the Ray Hatfield place lay, but the Malad report suggests it was on the Oneida side too.
The Hatfields were among the families from Dayton, Washington, who settled near Summit. Clive H. Hatfield filed on 160 acres in Bannock Valley in October 1913. By 1917 he leased 640 acres besides his own land and was plowing with a 10-20 tractor, as told in Horses and the first tractors. Ray Hatfield was almost certainly the son of P. A. Hatfield "of Arbon valley" named in a 1927 death notice for another son, Ralph; no other Ray Hatfield is known in the valley. That notice lists five brothers, among them Max, Phil and Ray Hatfield of Arbon, but the scan is too poor to read the rest of the names with certainty. The site's family research takes Clive to be another of P. A. Hatfield's sons. That is probable, though the 1924 reports do not say so. In March 1924 Ralph and Lee Hatfield had been freighting grain from Pauline to the railroad at Schiller, as told in the wheat-buying war at Schiller.
The papers do not say what the loss came to, whether the insurer paid anything, or how the Hatfields finished threshing that year. The family stayed. On October 30, 1924, the Tribune reported that the women of the south end and "the adjoining canyon community" had formed the Sunshine Canyon club, with Mrs. Walter S. Fredrich of Bull Canyon as president and Mrs. Clive Hatfield as vice president.
The site's Stories entry on smut explosions gives "five sacks" of wheat, as the Ogden paper's scanned text reads. The Tribune's page reads "seventy-five" clearly. The Ogden text, as scanned, also ends with the uninsured grain, before the paragraph naming Clive Hatfield and his insured outfit.
The article as printed
Pocatello Tribune, August 10, 1924, page 2. Transcribed from the page scan. Two periods missing on the page are supplied in brackets; small comma-like marks after "A," "did" and "the" (before "county") are taken as specks in the print and left out.
Considerable Damage From Smut Explosion
(Tribune Special)
Malad, Aug. 9.—A smut explosion on the Ray Hatfield place, in Arbon valley this week destroyed the threshing outfit together with seventy-five sacks of wheat, a wagon, derrick and the unthreshed stack of grain. There was no insurance on the grain.
The threshing outfit belonged to Clive Hatfield[.] The outfit was insured, but it is said the insurance did not cover the machinery while in operation. This is the first fire reported from the grain fields of the county this year.
Reports indicate that smut is not bad over the county this season[.] Where it does exist, however, it is sufficient reason for taking every possible precaution to prevent explosions and destruction by fire.
Sources
- Pocatello Tribune, August 10, 1924, page 2
- Ogden Standard-Examiner, August 9, 1924, page 3
- American Falls Press, October 16, 1913, page 8
- American Falls Press, October 7, 1915, page 1
- American Falls Press, November 23, 1917, page 3
- American Falls Press, March 6, 1924, page 4
- Pocatello Tribune, October 30, 1924, page 3
- Salt Lake Tribune, December 16, 1927, page 27