In the fall of 1979 a small crew from Idaho State University in Pocatello set out to call on the families of Arbon Valley. They meant to ask the people who lived there, and people who once had, about the valley's past, and to find and map what was left of it on the ground.
The Idaho State Journal announced the work on November 9, 1979, on a page of its third section, beside a photograph of the valley. The project belonged to the Idaho Museum of Natural History, which was housed on the ISU campus and had received its statewide name only the year before. B. Robert Butler, the museum's curator of archaeology, called it a cultural resource survey. In practice that meant hunting through the valley for whatever had a part in its past or the region's, be it a road, a trail, a building or a landmark, and then checking each find against the historic sites Idaho and the nation already had on their books.
The survey covered the valley from the Fort Hall Reservation line in the northwest down to where Bureau of Land Management land began in the south, leaving out every federal acre. Crew members planned to knock on the door of every family living there at the time. Butler also hoped to hear from people who had left the valley but still carried its history, and asked them to reach him at the university. Under the photograph, a caption boiled the job down to three tasks: interviews about what residents remembered, mapping of old homestead sites and travel routes, and a photographic record of the valley.
Butler made a point of saying that what the residents themselves knew and valued counted. He was after the history nobody had written down, and he wanted residents to decide for themselves which old buildings, trails and relics in the valley were worth saving. By his account no one had made a systematic survey of this kind in Arbon Valley before.
The crew was a mix of trained hands and volunteers. Its chief, Ken Anderson, had a degree in cultural resource management. John Grahl and Ray Hunter, both on the university's staff, gave their time for nothing out of a personal interest in the valley and its past; the article does not say what drew them to it. Federal matching dollars passed through the State Historic Preservation Office covered the cost, and the crew expected to be in the field until late summer 1980.
Ten days later, on November 19, the Journal printed the story again, without the photograph, on a page of ISU news under the headline "Team Studies Arbon Valley." It left out the list of crew members and added a closing passage, partly blurred on the surviving page, that appears to explain that the museum's archaeology division was one of the state's regional archaeological centers, serving eastern Idaho and working with the preservation office.
What came of the survey is not known to us. No later report of its progress or findings turned up in the newspaper pages we have searched, and we have not found a published report under its name. If the crew's notes, maps, photographs and interviews survive, they may be in the museum's or the preservation office's files, but that has not been checked. Nothing in the article connects crew chief Ken Anderson to the valley's Andersen family, or Butler to the Butlers who homesteaded near Arbon, and we have not tried to.
If you or your parents talked with the survey team in 1979 or 1980, or know where its records ended up, the site would be glad to hear from you through the contribute page.
On this site: the Arbon area and the family histories gather much of what the crew hoped to record, and the valley map places the old homesteads. For earlier efforts to set down the valley's beginnings, see D. J. Bowen tells how Arbon began, 1917 and the 1967 Arbon Valley reunion.
The story as reported
Idaho State Journal, November 9, 1979, Section C, page 8. The original article is under copyright; this is our own report of what it said.
B. Robert Butler, curator of archaeology at the Idaho Museum of Natural History at Idaho State University, announced in November 1979 that a museum crew was at work on a broad survey of Arbon Valley's historic sites.
Its members included both trained and amateur hands in history and archaeology. They planned to visit each household in a district bounded by the Fort Hall Reservation line on the northwest and by Bureau of Land Management land to the south; federal ground was not part of the survey. People who had left the valley but remembered its past were welcome to get in touch with Butler at ISU as well.
According to Butler, the crew wanted a complete view of the valley, listing every road, trail, building or landmark with a bearing on local or regional history. The team would then see how each find stood next to the historic places Idaho and the federal government had already recorded. He said the team was after "the unwritten history of the area," and wanted present and former residents to say which old things in the valley they thought should be kept.
Fieldwork was scheduled to run into late summer 1980, six to eight months at the least. Federal matching money handled by the State Historic Preservation Office paid for it. Under federal law, that office had the job of conducting such surveys across Idaho and rating the importance of cultural sites on both government and private property. Butler described the project as the "first attempt at a systematic cultural resource survey" in the valley.
The crew numbered six. Leading it was Ken Anderson, who had trained in cultural resource management and had gone on to graduate study in education at ISU. Bob Waite came from the ISU history department, where he served as its historic preservation officer. Barbara Perry was an ISU student majoring in history, and Jonena Hearst Bamford held an anthropology degree from Prescott College in Arizona. Rounding out the group were John Grahl and Ray Hunter, who worked for the university and volunteered on the survey out of their own interest in Arbon Valley's past.
The story ran with a photograph of the valley. Its caption listed three jobs: a photographic record of the valley, maps showing where the old roads, trails and homesteads had been, and interviews about what residents remembered.