On Friday afternoon, February 27, 1981, the State of Idaho was set to auction some of its Arbon Valley land at the Power County Courthouse in American Falls. That same day the Idaho State Journal explained why. The state was selling its school endowment farmland across Idaho, about 50,000 acres in all, and the caption under the paper's photograph of the sale notices named the Arbon Valley, Rockland and Holbrook areas.
The land and the notices
The Journal's article, by staff writer Paul Beebe, gave the background. The land went back to 1890, when the new state received federal grants whose income was to go to the public schools and a few other institutions. Through most of the following decades the farm ground in those grants was rented out, not sold. In 1975 the State Land Board decided to sell, and by 1981 the sales were well under way.
State land had been for sale in the valley before. In 1913 a contributor to the Boise Statesman, describing what was then still called Bannock valley, wrote these lines, which the Semi-Weekly Pocatello Tribune reprinted on August 9:
There is state land for sale in the valley, appraised at $16. The deeded land is generally held at $20.
The 1981 notice ran in the Journal on February 8 and again on February 15 under the heading "State Land Sales." Its first parcel, number 118-79, was a 120-acre tract in Arbon Valley about 25 miles southwest of Pocatello, all dry farmland, appraised at $39,000, or about $325 an acre. Whoever held the lease could still harvest the 1981 crop. The largest offering was a full section of 640 acres, to be sold in two units of 320 acres. Each unit was part dry farm and part wasteland, and one also had some dry grazing land. They were appraised at $48,700 and $61,470. The notice also listed a 160-acre tract and an 80-acre tract, both about 20 miles south of Pocatello. Buyers could pay 10 percent down and the rest over 20 years at 10 percent interest, but they or their agents had to be at the courthouse to bid.
The sale
On March 8 the Journal reported the results, given out from Idaho Falls by L. D. Benedick, the Department of Lands' area supervisor. The five units, about 1,000 acres, had brought $348,000. Kenneth Estep of Pocatello bought the 120 acres "in Arbon Valley near Pauline" for $66,000, which works out to $550 an acre, about 69 percent over the appraisal. The full section, which the report placed near Crystal, went to two buyers from Pocatello. Mrs. Jean Wright paid $99,000 for the north half and Elnora Wright paid $102,000 for the other unit, together about 80 percent more than the two appraisals. Ralph Lusk of Arimo paid $53,000 for the 160 acres, which lay near Rattlesnake Creek, and Herman Krueger of Arimo paid $28,000 for the 80 acres after fifteen people bid on it. More state land auctions were set for the following week at Malad and again at American Falls.
Who the buyers were
The report gives only names and towns. The Kenneth Estep who bought the Pauline parcel was probably Ken Estep (1949–2021), son of Luther and Eileen Ward Estep of Arbon. According to his 2021 obituary, he spent some years in Pocatello selling insurance and giving financial advice after college and professional bowling, and then farmed in Arbon full time. He later served as a Power County commissioner. Elnora Wright was probably Elnora Trullinger Wright, the former Crystal teacher and widow of Carl Wright of the Beuten and Wright ranch at Crystal. She was 88 in 1981 and died two years later. Neither identification is stated in the papers. The report does not say how Jean Wright was related to Elnora, if at all, or anything more about the two Arimo buyers.
What is not known
The papers do not give the legal description of the Arbon parcel, so its exact location near Pauline is not known. They also do not say who had been leasing it, or whether the buyers were the lessees. Statewide, the Department of Lands estimated that about four in five buyers were. Whether more Arbon Valley state land was sold in the later auctions is not known from the pages read.
On this site: Pauline and West Fork, Crystal, the Ward family from whom the Arbon Esteps descend, the 2010 farewell for Commissioner Ken Estep, Standard Oil's state leases in the valley in 1949, and Arbon Valley land in the want ads, 1976–1983.
The story as reported
Idaho State Journal, February 27, 1981, page 9 (section B, page 1). The original article is under copyright; this is our own report of what it said.
By Wednesday, February 25, roughly 20,000 acres of state farmland had already passed into private hands, by the estimate of Jim Mitchell, chief of the Bureau of Lands in the Department of Lands, and another 30,000 acres were to go on the block before 1983. Power, Madison, Teton and Bonneville counties accounted for most of what had sold. Mitchell told the Journal that no fiscal year in Idaho's history had seen as much land sold as this one would.
Finding bidders had been easy. Appraisers had put most parcels at $350 to $450 an acre, and nothing went for less. A parcel that drew no bid at its appraisal stayed with the state, to be appraised a second time or held back until prices improved. Most winning bids had landed 20 to 30 percent above appraisal; a few parcels went for more than half again their appraised value. Whatever a buyer paid, the minerals beneath the ground remained the state's. Four of every five buyers, Mitchell guessed, were farmers who had been leasing the same ground. He expected little of it to go out of crops. Some parcels had gone to people living outside Idaho, though Mitchell gave no figure for how many.
Mitchell insisted the sales were not a response to Idaho's current money problems. The leases themselves were the trouble. Lessees complained that ten years at the state's rent was too costly, while critics on the other side argued the rent was set too low, and managing the ground had become a burden for his office. According to Mitchell, the Land Board voted to sell "to get rid of the headache." The counties would come out ahead too. The law did not let them tax state land, so every parcel sold would add to their property tax base.
None of the money could be spent outright. The acres came to Idaho from the federal government at statehood in 1890 so that they would earn income for the public schools and several other state institutions. Under the state constitution, money from selling or renting that land cannot be spent. Mitchell put the expected proceeds at about $20 million. That sum would go into the Public School Endowment Fund, where only its interest would be available to the schools and other institutions to help pay their yearly operating costs. Beebe suggested that in the long run this could help keep school taxes from climbing quite so fast.
Selling state land was nothing new, Mitchell said; Idaho had done some of it from its first years. In the early 1900s, though, the aim was to bring settlers onto open country, and leasing remained the usual arrangement for farm ground. Selling the farm ground outright was a 1975 choice of the State Land Board, the body that directs the Department of Lands. Five officials sat on that board then: Governor Cecil Andrus, Secretary of State Pete Cenarrusa, Attorney General Wayne Kidwell, State Auditor Joe Williams and Superintendent of Public Instruction Roy Truby. Sales stayed small until 1980, when the department brought in outside appraisers. The state had no plans to part with the timber land his office manages, Mitchell said.