Early on Friday, December 29, 1944, a cabin plane flying from Bozeman, Montana, to Salt Lake City came down in deep snow in the mountains southwest of Pocatello, and all three people aboard were killed. Two men in a search plane found the wreck that afternoon while circling Arbon Valley, and a ground party carried the dead out to Michaud that night. The Pocatello Tribune and the Salt Lake Tribune both reported the crash on Sunday, December 31.
The plane was a privately owned Stinson. Its pilot, Leonard Lynch, 38, ran the Lynch flying service at Belgrade, Montana. His passengers were Mrs. Garrett L. Starmer, 35, of Bozeman, whom the Salt Lake Tribune named as Ethel Mae Starmer, and her baby son, Garrett L. Starmer Jr., whom the Pocatello report called six months old and the Associated Press four months. None of them were from the valley. An Associated Press dispatch from San Jose, California, printed with the Pocatello story, said Mrs. Starmer had decided to travel by air to reach her mother, Mrs. Clara W. Davis, who was critically ill in San Jose.
The last message
At 3:25 that Friday morning Lynch called the Pocatello municipal airport by radio. He gave his altitude as 7,000 feet and, as far as the damaged page can be read, said that ice was forming on the wings. The Salt Lake Tribune called this the pilot's "last frantic radio message" and described the flight as caught in a storm. The Pocatello Tribune gave about 3:25 a.m. as the time of the crash.
Found from the air
The message set off a search. At 2:10 that afternoon A. A. Bennett and Dwight Reynolds spotted the wreck from Bennett's plane as they circled Arbon Valley. The Salt Lake Tribune described Bennett as a longtime Idaho pilot and the new state aeronautics director, and Reynolds as an inspector for the Civil Aeronautics Administration. Neither paper says why the search turned toward the valley.
A ground party then set out: an ambulance, a utility truck and eight men from the Pocatello army air field, together with Deputy Sheriff Ray Reynolds and Walter Woodworth of Bennett's flying service. The Salt Lake Tribune says Bennett led the party, and the Pocatello Tribune says Woodworth was the first to reach the plane. One paper said the snow at the site was waist deep, and the other said it was at least three feet deep. The searchers reached the plane at about 6:30 p.m. With them was Maj. Clinton Hollister, a physician from the army air field, who said the three had probably been killed instantly.
It took three hours to reach the wreck and carry the bodies back to the point beyond which the ambulance could not go. The party came out at Michaud at 10 p.m. Michaud, on the railroad, was where sixteen wagons had once hauled Arbon wheat, as the Arbon family history recalls. The bodies were placed in the custody of the Power County coroner, Hazel Davis, and Deputy Reynolds helped take them to American Falls. The Salt Lake Tribune printed the coroner's name as H. L. Davis. The coroner was probably the Miss Hazel Davis of American Falls who was Power County coroner in 1939, when an Associated Press item counted her as one of Idaho's two women coroners. Neither paper says whether the deputy and the inspector, both named Reynolds, were related.
On Saturday, Deputy Reynolds reported, a brother of Lynch came to American Falls and took charge of the bodies. The same report said Mrs. Starmer's husband was in Chicago and was expected on Monday.
What the wreck showed
The marks in the snow showed how the plane had come down. It had been flying west when it struck a ridge, which tore off its landing gear, and the gear was found at the crest. The plane then plunged and bounced downhill across two small rises, and its wings were torn apart. The fuselage came to rest at the bottom of a gully "in a quaking aspen grove." The Salt Lake Tribune's text is jumbled at this point, but it seems to give the ridge as about 6,500 feet high.
Where it came down
According to Deputy Reynolds, the plane lay in the mountains about three miles southwest of Kinport Peak, "in the Midnight canyon area, just above the Hubbard ranch." The Midnight canyon was probably the canyon of Midnight Creek, which together with Rattlesnake Creek drains the Crystal basin and feeds Bannock Creek, as the Crystal history describes. If so, the plane came down in the hills around the Crystal basin. Neither paper names the county, but the bodies went to the Power County coroner. The distance from Pocatello in the Salt Lake Tribune report is garbled in the surviving text. It is also not known which Hubbard family had the ranch in 1944, and neither account identifies anyone in the search as a valley resident.
The story as reported
Pocatello Tribune, December 31, 1944, page 1. The original article is under copyright; this is our own report of what it said.
POCATELLO — A privately owned Stinson crashed early on Friday, December 29, 1944, and none of the three people aboard survived. Deputy Sheriff Ray Reynolds located the wreck some three miles to the southwest of Kinport Peak, near Midnight canyon and above the Hubbard ranch.
Leonard Lynch, 38, was at the controls; he ran his own flying service, the Lynch flying service, at Belgrade, Montana. With him were a Bozeman mother and child, Mrs. Garrett L. Starmer, 35, and Garrett L. Starmer Jr., whose age the Tribune gave as six months.
The pilot's final word came by radio at 3:25 that morning, when he told Pocatello's municipal airport that he was at 7,000 feet and that his wings were icing up. The paper put the time of the crash at roughly the same moment.
Two men sighted the wreck from the air at 2:10 that afternoon: Inspector D. Reynolds and A. A. Bennett, whose firm was the Bennett flying service. Next, a rescue party headed for the site. The army air field sent an ambulance, a utility truck and a crew of eight, and Deputy Reynolds went along, as did Walter Woodworth, who worked for Bennett's flying service. Of the whole party, Woodworth got to the plane first.
Reports put the snow there at three feet or more, which made it hard work to get to the bodies. The ambulance could go only so far, and the round trip from there to the wreck and back with the dead took three hours. It was 10 p.m. when the searchers came out at Michaud. Hazel Davis, coroner of Power County, took custody of the bodies, and Deputy Reynolds helped move them to American Falls.
Flying westward, the Stinson hit a ridge hard enough to lose its landing gear, and the body of the plane rolled on down an embankment. Searchers found all three still in the cabin and had trouble getting them out.
On Saturday a brother of Lynch reached American Falls to look after the bodies, Deputy Reynolds said. The deputy had also been informed that Mrs. Starmer had been bound for San Jose, California, and that her husband, who was in Chicago, was due in on Monday.
From San Jose, the Associated Press reported that no one had yet told Mrs. Clara W. Davis, the mother of Mrs. Starmer, about the crash; she was critically ill and facing an operation. Her mother's illness was the reason Mrs. Starmer was flying. That dispatch said the child was four months old.
On this site: three other air crashes in and near the valley are told on the Stories page. A training bomber fell near Arbon Valley in January 1944, a light plane crashed at the upper end of the valley in 1950, and in 1963 two charter planes were lost in a snow squall.