Early on Saturday, July 24, 1948, a truck loaded with supplies for a summer sheep camp went over the edge of the grade on the Arbon road, about five miles south of Highway 30 N, and its driver, Dick Staker, was killed beneath it. The Pocatello Tribune put the story on its front page the next morning, beside the national news of Henry Wallace's Progressive Party convention.
Born in Rupert, in Minidoka County, Staker was about 31 and had made Power County his home for several years. Over that same stretch his employer had been Vern Eames, who ran sheep in the county. That summer he was herding sheep from a summer camp, and his wife and their two children, a son of eight and a daughter of 21 months, were at the camp.
His trip that morning began at American Falls, with the camp's supplies in the back. Power County's sheriff, W. J. Hoehnen, put the time at about seven in the morning and thought the truck had not been going fast. By the evidence, as the paper reported it, the truck had twice wandered toward the right-hand edge of the grade. Staker corrected it once, but the second time it went over, and although he jumped, the overturning truck came down on him. The sheriff's view was that Staker had probably "fallen asleep at the wheel." Out at the camp, his wife and children were still expecting him.
Dave Lusk, jr., came upon the wreck and reported it. The paper gives no more about him than that. He was probably David Wayne Lusk, then about 29, the son of David T. "Dave" Lusk of the Lusk family ranch at Lusk Loop, east of Pauline. The "jr." fits the son of a Dave Lusk, though the family had another young David, Perry Lusk's son David Reynold Lusk (1923–1982), who grew up on his father's West Fork ranch and, from about 1935, on the family's Bonanza Bar farm on the Snake River, and no other record has been found to confirm which man found Staker.
The Arbon road was the valley's main way north to the highway and the railroad, and through the 1930s the papers had followed the valley's efforts to get its wheat road across the reservation rebuilt. Sheepmen's bands had long used the ranges around Arbon Valley; in 1920 the valley's farmers had organized to keep the bands out of their canyons. The Tribune does not say where the camp was, or whether it lay in the valley itself or in the hills beyond.
Much is left unknown. The article does not give Staker's full name or the names of his wife and children, and no obituary, funeral notice or burial record has been found. Nothing more about Vern Eames has turned up either, and no link to any family on this site is known.
On this site: the Stories of the valley's tragedies include another death on the road outside the valley, George Bradley of Rattlesnake Creek, killed near American Falls in 1937; and an earlier truck accident on the valley road is told in B. O. Kelley and the Bannock Creek bridge at Pauline, 1918.
The story as reported
Pocatello Tribune, July 25, 1948, page 1. The original article is under copyright; this is our own report of what it said.
A sheepherder taking supplies out to his camp was killed early Saturday, July 24, when his truck went over the grade on the Arbon road and overturned on him. The wreck was about five miles south of Highway 30 N. Power County's sheriff, W. J. Hoehnen, gave the account.
The dead man was Dick Staker, given as about 31. He came originally from Rupert; Power County had been his home, and Vern Eames's sheep outfit his employer, for several years. According to the sheriff, Staker's wife and children, a boy of eight and a girl of 21 months, had been waiting at the summer sheep camp for him to come in.
It was Dave Lusk, jr., who came on the wreck, found Staker dead under the 1½-ton truck and reported it.
Hoehnen placed the accident at about 7 a.m., with Staker driving a truckload of camp supplies out from American Falls. To the sheriff, it looked as though the truck had not been going fast. The paper described a back-and-forth before the crash: the truck drifted right toward the edge, Staker swung it left, and it veered right once more. He got out of the cab with the truck already tipping over the edge, but it rolled onto him.
Hoehnen's opinion was that the driver had nodded off on the way to the camp.