In the winter and spring of 1924, Arbon Valley set out to get a cheese factory. The newspapers followed the plan from a meeting at Pauline in January to word, in April, that the factory's backer expected to ship the machinery in time to be making cheese by early summer. After that, the papers found so far fall silent.
Cheese itself was nothing new in the valley. Family histories on this site remember homestead wives who made it at home, among them Martha Daniels, wife of John Moroni Daniels. Near Pauline, Maggie Bolingbroke's cheese earned her husband Charles the name "the cheese man" (the Bolingbroke family). What was new in 1924 was the idea of a factory that would buy the valley's milk and make the cheese itself.
A meeting at Pauline
Cheese factories were spreading across southeastern Idaho that winter. Power County's one cheese factory had opened at Rockland, in the next valley to the west, at the end of 1923. In March the American Falls Press reported from Pocatello that new factories were appearing at "an average of one factory per week," and that the Kraft company's plant at Pocatello would open on June 1.
On January 24, 1924, the Salt Lake Tribune carried a Pocatello report that people of the Arbon Valley section were "enthusiastic over the prospects of a cheese factory." A meeting to find out how many cows were available would be held on Saturday afternoon at Pauline, at the north end of the valley. Members of the Pocatello real estate board and farm bureau officials from Bannock and Power counties were to help with the survey. "Bishop L. B. Evans of Arbon" had been in Pocatello that Monday arranging it. He was Lorenzo B. "Ren" Evans, one of the valley's first homesteaders and at that time bishop of the Arbon Ward (Lorenzo Bowen Evans and Anna Morse).
No full report of the meeting has been found, but the short state-news columns that Idaho weeklies printed soon picked up the story. In early February the Oakley Herald said that "Citizens of Arbon valley are contemplating the establishment of a cheese factory, provided sufficient cows can be signed," with the real estate men of Pocatello and the county farm bureau "back of the venture." The Rathdrum Tribune reported that valley residents had "signed up 300 cows for a cheese factory," and the Caldwell Tribune ran a one-line item under a Pauline dateline: "Arbon valley cheese factory is organized." On February 28 the Press, under the heading "A Potential Dairying Community," noted the Rockland factory taking 3,000 pounds of milk a day and added that another was "in process of organization in the Arbon valley."
Twenty-three farmers, 213 cows
On Wednesday, April 2, Ren Evans was in American Falls on business, and the next day's Press put his news on the front page:
Arbon valley is soon to have a cheese factory. It may be operating within the next month according to L. B. Evans, who was in the city Wednesday on business. Evans recently circulated a petition among the farmers of the community asking them to agree to sell their milk to the factory for one year and signed up twenty three farmers who promised milk, in support of the factory from 213 cows.
Evans thought that was "about half the cows in the community." The man behind the factory was Ernest Brog of Driggs, in the Teton Basin of eastern Idaho. It would be an independent concern, and Brog would come into the district on the strength of the farmers' agreements. "The price to be received for the cream will be based on the actual price of cheese," the Press explained.
A week later, on April 10, the Press had more:
Ernest Brog, of Driggs, who is backing a cheese factory for Arbon valley, expects to ship the machinery for his factory, to Arbon valley during the month in order that he may get his plant to producing by early summer. Committeemen are still signing up contracts for cows and it is anticipated that about 200 cows will be signed up to provide milk for the factory. Arbon valley farmers are uniting in their support of the project.
On April 16 a statewide roundup of industrial news in the Challis Messenger included the valley: "Arbon—Establishment of a cheese factory here is assured."
The numbers do not quite agree: 300 cows in the February report, 213 from twenty-three farmers in early April, and about 200 expected a week later. The papers do not say why.
Brog was probably the Swiss-born cheesemaker Ernest Brog (1896–1985). His obituary, as transcribed on Find a Grave, says he made Swiss cheese in Wisconsin after coming to America, then moved west to Freedom, Wyoming, in Star Valley. It credits him with pioneering the Swiss cheese industry in the western United States. His wife, Martha Kaufman, came from Driggs. Nothing found so far shows whether he ever worked in Arbon Valley.
What became of it
After April 16 the trail goes cold. The Press pages that could be searched between late May and early October 1924 do not mention an Arbon factory, and neither do the other papers searched. Several weeks of the Press, from mid-April to mid-May and from mid-July to mid-September, were not available for this search, and only some pages of other issues were, so a report may yet turn up. For now, whether the factory was built, where it stood and whether it ever made cheese are all unknown.
In early July the Press reported a meeting at Rockland where dairymen pressed a Kraft Cheese Company field man about what they were being paid for milk, and he pointed to "the great decline in prices of cheese." That meeting was at Rockland, not Arbon, but under the terms the Press reported in April, Arbon cream would have been paid for according to the price of cheese.
On this site: Lorenzo Bowen Evans and Anna Morse, the Evans family, Pauline and West Fork, and the Bolingbroke family, whose home cheese gave Charles Bolingbroke his nickname.
Sources
- Oakley Herald, January 4, 1924, page 4
- Salt Lake Tribune, January 24, 1924, page 3
- Oakley Herald, February 8, 1924, page 4
- Rathdrum Tribune, February 8, 1924, page 4
- Caldwell Tribune, February 12, 1924, page 6
- American Falls Press, February 28, 1924, page 1
- American Falls Press, March 27, 1924, page 1
- American Falls Press, April 3, 1924, page 1
- American Falls Press, April 10, 1924, page 1
- Challis Messenger, April 16, 1924, page 1
- American Falls Press, July 3, 1924, page 1
- Find a Grave, Ernest Brog (1896–1985), with his obituary from the Star Valley Independent