Skis, a weasel and a stuck plane: Crystal in February 1949

In mid-February 1949, deep in the hard winter of 1948–49, newspapers in Pocatello and Salt Lake City carried two reports from the Crystal country at the upper end of Arbon Valley. A rancher at Rattlesnake skied nine miles toward McCammon and, snowed in at Garden Creek Gap, telephoned that about 60 families in his area had had no new supplies for three weeks. At Mercer Creek, a rescue plane stuck fast in the snow, and a crawler vehicle called a "weasel" finally brought out a man who was seriously ill.

This site has told that winter through Nelda Williams's account, written for the Power County Press in 1999. The papers of the time show the same winter from the Crystal end of the valley.

The winter Nelda Williams remembered

Nelda Williams, a daughter of the Ward family, and her husband, Sod, spent that winter on the ranch where he fed cattle for the J. N. Arbon family. She remembered sub-zero cold from early November 1948, and that they were snowed in from the day after Christmas until March 22, 1949. Early in February a storm set in that did not let up for 17 days, the wind swinging between south and west. On the 14th day, she wrote, "our mail was flown out from Pocatello and dropped in a field" beside the post office, and Sod, the rural mail carrier, delivered it on horseback. Most ranchers had feed enough, she recalled, but hay was airlifted to some who could not reach their stacks.

"A blizzard to end all blizzards"

The papers read for this post take up the storm in the middle of the month. On Tuesday, February 15, the Pocatello Tribune reported that the Fort Hall Indian agency, on the reservation next to the valley, was still waiting for a 20,000-pound snowplow "to dig out after the 10 days of storms." The army had flown two C-47 transports to Pocatello to carry food and supplies to snowbound eastern Idaho, and more weasels were being brought in from the ordnance depot at Ogden. The next day's Tribune called them "amphibious crawler vehicles." Ten days of storms by February 15 fits Nelda Williams's memory of a storm that began early in the month.

A dispatch from Pocatello that night, printed in the next morning's Salt Lake Tribune, called it "a blizzard to end all blizzards." It had crippled southern Idaho from Boise east to Wyoming and Utah, and every highway out of Pocatello was blocked.

Skiing out from Rattlesnake

The same dispatch carried news from the valley. Ross Saxton, a rancher at Rattlesnake, which the paper put 18 miles west of McCammon, had skied nine miles to Garden Creek Gap on his way toward McCammon. Snowed in there, he telephoned McCammon that about 60 families in his area had had no new supplies for three weeks. The paper does not say how far his area reached.

Rattlesnake was very probably the Rattlesnake Creek country of Crystal, the high basin whose springs feed Rattlesnake and Midnight creeks. Garden Creek Gap lay on the way over the range to Garden Creek and Robin, on the McCammon side. Four army weasels were headed north from Hill Air Force Base that Tuesday night, and the Bannock County commissioners began asking for the use of at least one to go into Saxton's country. The papers read for this post do not say whether one reached the Rattlesnake families.

Three years later a farm page in the Deseret News named a Ross Saxton as one of the first Power County dry farmers to take up contour strip farming. He was probably the same man.

A weasel to Mercer Creek

The Pocatello Tribune of February 16 told the other story. Early on Monday, February 14, neighbors reported that Dave Siewert, 50, at Mercer Creek, was seriously ill. The paper placed Mercer Creek 43 miles southeast of American Falls. It is in the Crystal country, in the Rattlesnake Creek drainage near the Bradley ranch, where the Rattlesnake schoolhouse stood.

Walt Ogle, a pilot from a Pocatello flying service, reached the Mercer Creek area by plane. The plane stuck in the soft snow, though, and he could not take off again. Further attempts by plane and by weasel turned back in fog and storms. On Tuesday a weasel operated by Mose Wetzel and Fred Aguirre of American Falls finally got through. They brought Siewert out to Schiller siding, and from there an automobile took him to St. Anthony's hospital in Pocatello. On Wednesday the hospital reported him under observation and in good condition. Boyd Van Horn brought the weasel to American Falls. Ogle had been snowbound with the Siewerts for two days, and by the time the paper went to press he was out on another rescue mission.

The Salt Lake Tribune's dispatch of Tuesday night probably describes the same rescue, seen from the air. A light plane flying out of Pocatello found that a stalled weasel and a plane in Arbon Valley were safe (the scanned text reads "plans," most likely "plane"). The paper names no one.

Toward spring

The rest of Power County was in the same trouble. The Salt Lake Tribune reported a state rotary plow leading 16 trucks of food and fuel from American Falls into neighboring Rockland Valley. The Pocatello Tribune told of fifteen trucks from Rockland that reached American Falls on February 15, the first since the previous Wednesday, only to be marooned again when a new storm closed the roads behind them. The papers do not say whether these were the same trucks. Vard Meadows, the state senator for Power County, said that one carload of hay had reached American Falls ranchers just as the county's supply ran out. Many farmers were running low on feed, and ten more carloads were on the way from Fort Collins, Colorado.

At the Arbon ranch, Nelda Williams remembered, the main road was not dozed out until mid-March. In April the Logan Herald Journal's column of news from Glendale, near Preston, Idaho, noted that Mr. and Mrs. Lester Owen, who had spent the winter on a ranch in Arbon Valley, had returned home.

Nelda Williams's account does not mention the weasels or the Mercer Creek rescue, and the papers read for this post do not mention the mail drop at Arbon. None of them reports a death in the valley from the storms.

The story as reported

Salt Lake Tribune, February 16, 1949, page 7. The original article is under copyright; this is our own report of what it said.

POCATELLO, Idaho, Feb. 15 — Some 60 families in the Rattlesnake country west of McCammon have gone three weeks with nothing new in the way of supplies, according to a rancher who made a nine-mile trip on skis and then reported their plight by telephone. All of southern Idaho, from Boise to the Wyoming and Utah borders, lay at a standstill under a storm described as the blizzard of all blizzards.

The rancher, Ross Saxton, lives at Rattlesnake, about 18 miles west of McCammon, and McCammon was his goal when he started out. Snow halted him at Garden Creek Gap, and it was from there that he phoned the town.

Hill Air Force Base at Ogden, Utah, sent four army weasels northward Tuesday night. Bannock County's commissioners started steps to get the use of one or more of them for a trip into the Saxton country.

The pilot of a light plane that managed to leave the Pocatello airport early in the day, in spite of strong winds, found a plane and a stalled weasel in Arbon Valley, both of them safe. The valley lies to the east of American Falls.

Snow kept coming all Monday night and did not stop until midday Tuesday, with winds of 30 miles an hour on average and gusts as high as 49. Plows were useless until the afternoon. No highway leaving Pocatello was open on Tuesday, and roughly 100 cars and trucks were stranded starting early in the morning and still sat there well after dark. A southbound Greyhound bus struggled for five hours, up to noon, against the 10 miles below the city. Only the north-south trains kept to anything like a regular run.

Buildings at McCammon shook in the wind until the storm moved off at 5 p.m. An oil tanker stuck across the highway there kept a line of trucks and cars waiting until 6. Between Downey and Malad, giant drifts and minor slides of snow closed the passes.

Food and fuel went toward Rockland Valley from American Falls in 16 trucks, with a state rotary plow breaking trail ahead of them. Rockland residents had been cut off for two weeks.

With another Pacific storm on its way, the police and the state highway department asked drivers to keep off the roads on Wednesday.

On this site: Nelda Williams's full account, Winter of 1948-49 Hits Hard In Arbon, and the Stories entry The winter of 1948–49.