Three times in less than twenty years, newspapers reported Arbon Valley farmers fighting insects in their crops: grasshoppers in the summer of 1973, Mormon crickets moving through the Bull Canyon area in 1975, and crickets and grasshoppers in the safflower and spring wheat in 1991. The reports came from wire services and papers outside the valley, and they were not the first time the valley's crops had been threatened by insects.
An old trouble
Grasshoppers and crickets were an old trouble for the valley's families. By his family's account, the valley's namesake, George Arbon, lost crops to grasshoppers at Willard, Utah, and to crickets at Malad before he came to Bannock Valley. On July 13, 1922, the American Falls Press expected a good harvest across Power County, which had included Arbon since the county was formed in 1913:
While the harvest of 1922 is not expected to equal the banner years that have proceeded it, there is every prospect of an excellent yield of wheat in every section of the county. This is particularly true of Rockland and Arbon Valleys where many claim the crop will be heavier than last season despite pessimistic reports concerning grasshoppers, winter kill and squirrels.
A week later a notice promoting American Falls in the same paper said a dry fall in 1921 had allowed "the breeding of millions of grasshoppers," but that "prompt poisoning activities have for the most part destroyed them." Rockland Valley, which turns up in most of these reports, is the next valley to the west, "across the mountains," as the 1922 Press put it.
1973: spraying for hoppers
On July 20, 1973, the Herald Journal of Logan, Utah, surveyed a grasshopper campaign across southern Idaho. Spraying had begun in the last week of June and was expected to go on in places until the middle of August. In Bannock County, agent Charles Renberg said people had counted on the cold winter to kill the hopper eggs, and it had not. He added that the federal government would not spray crop land that year.
Power County's extension agent, Sterling Schow, said 79,880 acres had been sprayed in the county so far, and that some farmers and ranchers were putting large sums of money into the effort. Owners of private rangeland had paid 30 cents an acre to cover 26,680 acres. "We think we got the grasshoppers before the adult stage," Schow said. In the Arbon and Rockland valleys, where the winter wheat crops were large, he thought they "may be over the hump," though there was still private land to spray. The paper did not say what the hoppers cost Arbon's farmers that year.
1975: crickets on the march
Two summers later the trouble was crickets. On August 8, 1975, the Herald Journal printed a United Press International dispatch from Boise: farmers around Rockland had stopped the worst cricket infestation in Idaho in twenty-five years, which had threatened 50,000 acres of their dry-farmed land. Wilson Kellogg, director of the Idaho Department of Agriculture, said the farmers had finally been able to spray the crickets as they marched out of the rugged federal rangeland toward the grain fields. "We had a good kill," he said. The scan of the page is scrambled at this point, but it appears to say that Arbon Valley, across the hills from Rockland, had also had cricket problems.
A month later the valley itself was the news. A UPI dispatch from Malad City, printed in the Herald Journal on September 5, 1975, said Mormon crickets were "on the march again in southern Idaho," this time in the Arbon Valley area. Federal officials said large swarms had been in the valley's crops for the past few weeks. Officials of the Bureau of Land Management and the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimated that the insects were moving about a mile a day in the Bull Canyon area, in the Summit country between Arbon and Buist. They had counted as many as 18 crickets, apparently to the square foot; the scanned text prints the unit apart from the figure, so it is not certain. Farmers were spreading poison bait and spraying their fields.
The dispatch recalled that the Rockland outbreak, the worst in southern Idaho in at least twenty-five years, had been brought under control with chemicals once the crickets left the rugged BLM land around the grain fields. Officials said spraying and poison bait appeared to have contained the insects, but the crickets had already laid their eggs, and with the right weather the spring hatch could devastate the farm and range land around them. No report of what the 1976 hatch brought has been found.
The dispatch placed Arbon Valley in Oneida County. Arbon itself has been in Power County since 1913, though the Buist end of the valley lies in Oneida County, and the report does not say on which side of the line the infested fields were.
1991: down from the hills
On July 11, 1991, the Salt Lake Tribune carried an Associated Press item datelined Arbon Valley, under the heading "Insects Munching Wheat, Safflowers." Farmers in southeastern Idaho had felt sure of their crops that spring, it said, because no one had reported grasshoppers or Mormon crickets. Then the "ravenous insects" came down from the surrounding hills into fields of safflower and spring wheat, in Arbon Valley and elsewhere. Ken Estep had watched crickets eat four acres of safflower. "We have lost some of the spring crops right to the ground," he said.
He was probably the Ken Estep of Arbon named in the obituary of his mother, Eileen Ward Estep, who with her husband, Louie, grew wheat and barley and raised beef cattle at Arbon. He was probably also the Power County commissioner for whom a farewell open house was announced for December 27, 2010. The item also shows that safflower was among the valley's crops by 1991. No more of the item can be read in the scan.
The story as reported
Logan Herald Journal, September 5, 1975, page 3. The original article is under copyright; this is our own report of what it said.
MALAD CITY, Idaho (UPI) — Federal officials reported on Thursday, September 4, 1975, that big swarms of Mormon crickets were now attacking Arbon Valley crops, a fresh outbreak in southern Idaho after the nearby Rockland area was badly hit earlier in the year.
According to the officials, the swarms had been in the valley's fields for the past several weeks. To kill them, valley farmers had put out poisoned bait and sprayed.
Around Bull Canyon, Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Department of Agriculture workers estimated, the crickets were pushing ahead about one mile every day. The officials found spots with 18 of them packed into one square foot.
The dispatch placed the valley in Oneida County, southeast of Rockland. Rockland's wheat country had taken its own hit from the crickets earlier in the summer, and officials ranked that outbreak as the worst southern Idaho had known in 25 years or more. Crews stopped it with chemicals only after the swarms came off the rough BLM ground ringing the grain and into the planted fields.
In Arbon Valley, officials said, the bait and spraying seemed to have kept the swarms from spreading further. The danger was not over. Eggs were already in the ground, and officials warned that a season of good weather for the insects could bring a spring hatch able to ruin the farms and range around the valley.
On this site: Summit, with the history of Bull Canyon; George Dennis Arbon, whose family remembered the grasshoppers of Willard and the crickets of Malad; and Eileen Ward Estep.