At the end of 1940, the farm families of Arbon Valley and Crystal took an organized step toward bringing electric power to their homes. Their vehicle was a Rural Electrification Administration project, launched at a meeting in the Pauline schoolhouse; the paper listed three dozen people who had put their names down for service, plus the Arbon ward meeting house and a school district. The Pocatello Tribune printed the news, sent from American Falls, on December 31, 1940.
A valley without power lines
In 1940 the valley had lived for years beside electricity without having it. The first power line through the valley was built in 1926 and 1927 to join the American Falls power plant to a plant in Utah, and it carried current past farms that had none. Families made light as they could. George Bradley had a water wheel on Rattlesnake Creek, the Guy Bolingbrokes ran a Delco plant, and Eddie and May Davis bought a wind charger for lights, an iron and a radio. Most homes still used coal-oil lamps.
A year of farm programs
The sign-up came at the end of a year in which farm programs were busy in the valley. The Tribune of March 22, 1940, reported on the work of the Arbon and Crystal farm program planning boards: they had drawn up a land map of their section, sorted by class, and had offered suggestions for how that land ought to be put to use and which improvements and projects the area should get. What those recommendations were, the paper did not say. The Arbon-Crystal board was Jack Price, Wm. Allard, John Anderson, Lee Anderson, Ray O. Burge, Waldo Evans, Mrs. Lee Newport, O. W. Hatch, Carl Wrensted, Chester Smith, Lloyd "Browser" (probably Lloyd Brower of Crystal), Mrs. G. C. Wright, George Meyers and Norman Hayden, with help from Karl Hobson and County Agent E. J. Palmer.
Two days later the Sunday Tribune-Journal listed the county's meetings on the 1940 farm program of the agricultural conservation association. Crystal's was set for the afternoon of March 29 at the Crystal schoolhouse, and Arbon's for that evening at the Central schoolhouse. The program would be explained by Joe Heward, the district fieldman, who was also bringing films about it; wheat loans, crop insurance and the farm outlook were on the agenda as well.
The meeting at Pauline
The December report does not give the date of the meeting at the Pauline schoolhouse. In the paper's account, Holbrook and Rockland were starting a project of their own at the same time, and the two together would enlarge the Raft River project, already up and running. Several of the signers can be matched, with varying certainty, to people with pages on this site; most of these matches rest on names and initials and on valley residence, so they are probable rather than proven: J. N. Arbon, very likely Joseph Nicholas Arbon; Waldo Evans, who also sat on the planning board; Elmer Ward; Guy Bolingbroke; Eddie Davis, with E. H. Davis and Orval Davis, probably his father and brother; F. W. and R. H. Swim, probably the brothers Frank and Bob Swim; several Baileys; and three men printed as Anderson who were very likely of the Andersen family, A. O. (Otto), J. C. (John) and his son Willard. School district No. 11 was probably the Arbon district known as Valley View.
Seven years later
None of the papers read for this post tells what became of the 1940 project, or whether any valley home was lit by it. The next report, printed September 7, 1947, comes from Idaho Power. Idaho Power was bringing its service to three parts of the valley, the Rattlesnake, Arbon and Crystal sections, and C and L Electric, a Pocatello contractor, held the contract to build the line. Under construction over the Mink Creek divide, that line ran 88 miles, which put it among the longest rural lines Idaho Power had. Don C. Brown, the company's Pocatello manager, named late fall as the time he hoped valley residents could be connected.
That report fits Zella Bolingbroke's memory that 1947 was the year electricity came, and the Buist history's "about 1947." It does not fit the account on the Eph Bolingbroke page, which dates power to 1945 and credits the REA. The site has listed the company or co-operative that first served the valley as an open question. For the Rattlesnake, Arbon and Crystal sections, the 1947 report names Idaho Power. It does not say whether the line also reached Buist or Summit, or when the first house was connected.
On this site: the Firsts entry on electric power, and Frozen fog on the Arbon Valley power lines, 1954, which tells how ice weighed on the new lines in the winters of 1950 and 1954.
The story as reported
Pocatello Tribune, December 31, 1940, page 8. The original article is under copyright; this is our own report of what it said.
The Pocatello Tribune named 36 people of Arbon Valley and Crystal, along with the Arbon ward meeting house and school district No. 11, among those who had signed up for electric power, in a report from American Falls at the close of 1940. Farmers from both places had gathered not long before at the Pauline schoolhouse and set up a Rural Electrification Administration project of their own, and the list came out of that gathering.
The paper linked the valley's effort to a parallel one under way at Holbrook and Rockland, and said the combined work would widen the reach of the Raft River project, which was already delivering power.
By the paper's count, not one farmer who signed for power missed the meeting, and it took that full turnout as proof of strong local interest.
The signers named in the report were Leland F. Bailey, Ernest Poppie, William Allard, W. R. Porter, C. C. Payne, R. H. Swim, J. N. Arbon, Lee Newport, L. H. Bailey, Vernal Bailey, John Bolingbroke Jr., T. H. Hill, Luther Estep, A. O. Anderson, Ernest Davis, Willard Anderson, Elmer Ward, M. V. Fallon (the first letter is unclear on the page), George England, F. W. Swim, Eddie Davis, James L. Payne, J. C. Anderson, Waldo Evans, J. H. Bolingbroke, Orval Davis, E. H. Davis, C. W. Wiedeman, Guy Bolingbroke, Jesse Keeler, William Stephens, Ray Burge, Jack Price, Leroy Lindley, Melvin Bailey and J. R. Bailey.
The article did not say when the meeting was held, who led it, what the service would cost, or when lines might be built.