On the afternoon of Sunday, March 26, 1978, a pickup truck rolled over on Arbon Road in Arbon Valley, about eight miles north of the Arbon store, and Wally Hardy, 40, of Bannock Creek, was killed. The Idaho State Journal in Pocatello carried the news in its "Police Log" the next day and printed his obituary the day after that.
Hardy was riding north with Franklin E. Fisher, 36, of Heyburn, in a pickup that belonged to Fisher. The Power County sheriff's office traced the truck's path: first off to the right and 250 feet down the borrow pit, the roadside ditch left where earth was dug to build up the roadbed; then back over the highway and off its opposite edge, where it went over three times. A sheriff's spokesman said Hardy died at the crash site, and the office could place the time no closer than before 4 p.m. Fisher survived.
The case was still open on Monday. Investigators did not yet know whether Hardy or Fisher had been behind the wheel, and they had not pinned down why the truck went off the road. Speed was the one cause the spokesman would point to, and he put no number on it. No later report has been found, so it is not known what the investigation concluded.
According to the sheriff's office, Hardy's home had been on Bannock Creek Road, on the Fort Hall Reservation, the reservation land along lower Bannock Creek that borders the valley on the north. The report names the road only as Arbon Road. It was probably the valley's road north down Bannock Creek and across the reservation, whose rebuilding the papers had followed in the 1930s, though the article does not say so.
His obituary, in the Journal of March 28, filled in his life. Fort Hall was his birthplace, and Henry and Bessie Nannekey Hardy were his parents; the date was November 11, 1937. New Mexico was where he learned to weld, and the Forest Service later employed him at Salmon and at Island Park. His church was the Native American Church. Death had already taken his wife, Phyllis Wahtomy Hardy, along with a brother, two sisters and a half sister. Still living were his daughter, Treasa Hardy of Fort Hall; his brother Howard Hardy of Bannock Creek; a half brother; and a sister. Word of the funeral was to come later from Manning Funeral Chapel; that notice has not been found, so the date of the funeral and the place of burial are not known here.
The sources read for this post do not say why the two men were on the road that Sunday, or exactly where the truck left it. Hardy is not known to be connected with any of the homestead families told on this site.
On this site: an earlier death on the valley road is told in B. O. Kelley and the Bannock Creek bridge at Pauline, 1918; the reservation lands along lower Bannock Creek and the road built across them appear in When the Bannock Creek lands were allotted, 1911–1922; and other accidents are gathered in the Stories of the valley's tragedies.
The story as reported
Idaho State Journal, March 27, 1978, page 2. The original article is under copyright; this is our own report of what it said.
A rollover on Arbon Road on Sunday took the life of a Bannock Creek man, and on Monday the Power County sheriff's office had not finished looking into it.
The dead man was Wally Hardy, 40, who died at the crash site, the sheriff's office said. Officers put the wreck roughly eight miles up the road from the Arbon store and could say only that it came no later than 4 p.m.
Riding with Hardy was Franklin E. Fisher, 36, of Heyburn, the office said, and the two were northbound when their pickup veered off to the right. It ran 250 feet down the borrow pit, swung back over the highway and out the other side, and flipped three times.
Fisher survived the crash.
Who had been driving was still an open question for officers; the truck was Fisher's. The cause was unsettled too, although the spokesman offered one factor: "So far we've got speed involved." How fast the truck had been going, he could not estimate.
Home for Hardy, according to the spokesman, had been Bannock Creek Road on the Fort Hall Reservation.