Early in September 1970 two elderly men from Fort Hall drove a pickup into the Bannock Peak country at the northern end of Arbon Valley and did not come home. One of them, a sheepherder named Tom Leach, set off on foot after the truck broke down, and for about a day sheriff's officers, volunteer rescue workers, a plane, Bannock County's mounted posse and horsemen from the Bureau of Indian Affairs looked for him. The Pocatello Idaho State Journal reported the search on Thursday, September 3, and how it ended the next day.
A trip to a mining claim
According to the Journal, Leach and his friend James Cornelison, also of Fort Hall, had gone prospecting. Cornelison's mining claim lay in the country around Bannock Peak, which this site's account of a 1961 plane crash places about five miles northwest of Pauline. Out there the pickup's clutch gave out, stranding the truck and both men. On Wednesday, September 2, Leach started walking toward Rockland, which lies in the neighboring valley to the west.
The search
It was Helen Shepard, related to Cornelison, who raised the alarm that Wednesday night. Deputies from the Power County sheriff's office went out after dark, and Bannock County Search and Rescue volunteers drove out to help them. In the early hours of Thursday rescuers came upon the stalled pickup with Cornelison still there, and he then joined the hunt for Leach.
Roughly eight Search and Rescue volunteers were out on Thursday in the country toward Rockland, most of them crossing it in four-wheel-drive vehicles while two who were pilots flew a plane overhead. C. M. Windham, the special officer for the Bureau of Indian Affairs, told the paper the bureau's range department had put three men on horseback into the search. The Bannock County Mounted Sheriff's Posse turned out eleven members. Its president, Jim Lupher, went along and later named the others who searched with him: George Ellis, Murray Green, Don Mecham, Randall Adams, T. B. Porter, Doug Trego, Bill McAughey, Dean Hunter, Neal Freckleton and Karen Bird. The plane did not find Leach.
Home by bus
Leach, meanwhile, had rescued himself. Walking the whole way to Rockland, he found a ride on to Blackfoot and covered the last stretch to Fort Hall by bus, so that he was at home on the townsite Thursday night. Word that he was home brought the searchers in; they had been out for roughly a day.
What the papers do not say
The two reports do not tell exactly where in the Bannock Peak area Cornelison's claim lay, what he hoped to find there, or how far Leach walked before he reached Rockland. They do not agree on Cornelison's age: Thursday's paper said both men were in their seventies, while Friday's gave his age as 82. Nor do they say why the Bureau of Indian Affairs sent horsemen; they tell only that both men lived at Fort Hall. Neither man turns up elsewhere in the newspapers searched for this site, and nothing found ties either of them to a valley family.
On this site: Bannock Peak also appears in the account of an auto trip around the peak in 1911, and the history of Pauline and West Fork describes the northern end of the valley. An earlier search in the valley, for a young man who walked toward the mountains in 1954, is told in the search for Gene Bailey.
The story as reported
Idaho State Journal, September 3, 1970, page 2. The original article is under copyright; this is our own report of what it said.
The Journal of Thursday, September 3, 1970, carried word of a search in Arbon Valley for Tom Leach, a Fort Hall sheepherder in his seventies who had been gone since Wednesday; sheriff's officers and rescue volunteers were out looking.
His partner on the trip was James Cornelison, also of Fort Hall and also said to be past seventy, and they had gone up near Bannock Peak to prospect on a mine claim Cornelison owned. Their pickup quit when its clutch failed, and on Wednesday Leach left it and struck out for Rockland, so that was where the searchers concentrated.
Helen Shepard, related to Cornelison, had called it in on Wednesday night once it was clear neither man was coming home. Power County deputies began looking that same night, helped by Bannock County Search and Rescue volunteers who drove out to join them. By early Thursday rescuers had found Cornelison at the disabled pickup, and the paper said he was now out with the searchers.
Search and Rescue had about eight people on the job Thursday: a pair of pilots in the air and the rest on the ground in four-wheel-drive vehicles. C. M. Windham, the Bureau of Indian Affairs special officer, said three riders from the bureau's range department were on their way to help.
Friday's paper brought the end of the story. By then Leach was safe. He had walked to Rockland, found a ride to Blackfoot and come home to the Fort Hall townsite by bus on Thursday night, which ended a search that had lasted about a day. The same report gave Cornelison's age as 82 and counted eleven members of the Bannock County Mounted Sheriff's Posse among the searchers.