In December 1967 a Snowville woman, Mrs. Mable Stokes, and her two boys spent a night in a house in Arbon Valley after their car stuck in a snowdrift. Soon afterward the Snowville news column of the Tremonton Leader, the weekly paper at Tremonton, Utah, told what happened and called it "a near tragedy."
Snowville lies in Curlew Valley in northern Box Elder County, Utah, just south of the Idaho line. The two places had old ties: George Dennis Arbon sought homestead land around Snowville before he came to Bannock Valley, as Arbon Valley was first called.
Mrs. Stokes left Snowville at about one o'clock on a Monday afternoon, bound for Twin Falls, Idaho, with her two sons, and her way lay through Arbon Valley. In the valley, the column said, blowing snow had drifted across the road and closed it, and their car stuck in the drift.
Expecting no help before morning, they carried the car's two blankets to a house they could see some way off and got in by breaking a window. The coal stove would not light, so they moved downstairs, which was warmer. An old mattress and a rug they found there, with the two blankets, were enough, in the column's words, to "keep from freezing to death."
In the morning they watched the road. A snowplow came through to open it, and when a truck appeared they went out and got a ride home to Snowville. By then the people in Twin Falls had telephoned to say the family never arrived, and the Highway Patrol was searching for them.
Others had trouble on the roads too. The same column reported that the beet trucks were having a bad time with the weather, and that the wind and snow had been so bad the Highway Patrol had to pilot cars and trucks around Malta and Burley, west of the valley in Idaho.
The column leaves a good deal unsaid. It gives no date: "last Monday," in a paper printed on Thursday, December 21, most likely means December 18, though it could mean the Monday before. It does not say which road Mrs. Stokes took into the valley or where the car stuck. Coming from the south, the valley road runs north from Holbrook; the Buist area history records that this gravel road was first oiled about 1959. Nor does the column say whose house the family sheltered in, or whether anyone was living there that winter, and it does not name the two boys or tell what became of the car. No other report of the night has been found. The Idaho papers that might have carried it, such as the Power County Press, were not available for this post.
The story as reported
Tremonton Leader, December 21, 1967, page 2. The original article is under copyright; this is our own report of what it said.
SNOWVILLE, Utah — A Snowville mother and her two sons came through a night stranded by a snowstorm in Arbon Valley, Idaho, sheltering in a house they reached on foot, and made it home the next morning while the Highway Patrol was out searching for them.
Mrs. Mable Stokes left Snowville with the boys at about 1 p.m. on a Monday, bound for Twin Falls by way of Arbon Valley. Wind-driven snow had piled into a drift that closed the valley road, and their car became stuck in it.
With little chance that anyone would come along before daylight, the three took the two blankets they carried in the car and set off for a house they could see some distance away. They got inside by breaking a window.
They could not get a fire going in the coal stove. Finding the lower floor the warmer part of the house, they settled there for the night, using an old mattress and a rug they came upon along with their blankets.
At daybreak they kept watch on the road. A snowplow arrived to open it, and when a truck came along, the family hurried out and rode back to Snowville with it.
By then the people expecting them in Twin Falls had telephoned to say the family never arrived, and the Highway Patrol had begun a search.
The storm caused trouble elsewhere as well. Beet trucks struggled with the weather and the roads, and wind and snow were bad enough that the Highway Patrol escorted cars and trucks in the Malta and Burley area.
On this site: the winter of 1948–49, when valley families were snowed in from the day after Christmas until late March and the mail came by air, and the story of Frank Kulock, who froze to death within sight of his home in a blizzard in February 1922.