Crystal will be almost deserted: the winter of 1923–24

In the winter of 1923–24 a number of families left Crystal, the dry-farm settlement in the high basin where Rattlesnake and Midnight creeks rise, and the people who reported it were the settlement's schoolchildren. Their columns in the American Falls Press tell, week by week, who was leaving and how Crystal nearly lost its post office.

The school reporters

Arbon Valley had been part of Power County since 1913, and the Press at American Falls was the county paper. That fall it began printing news written by the pupils of the county's rural schools. On November 15, 1923, it explained:

The first news written by the students of the rural schools appears in the Press this week and comes from Arbon Valley schools. The Pauline school was the first to send in news items and the Crystal school was a close second. The numeral at the end of the news paragraphs indicates the grade of the pupil that wrote the item and is for the information of the teacher in the school.

Crystal's items came signed by pupils such as Emma Hayden, Elaine and Dean Howells, and a seventh grader who signed as Theo, named in one column as Miss Theo Allsworth.

The post office nobody wanted

On November 22 the Crystal news carried a worry. Mrs. W. C. Snyder, who kept the post office, said she was going to move, and "nobody seems to want to take the postoffice and will probably be without one if Mrs. Snyder goes." Cora Snyder had been Crystal's first postmistress in 1910. In October 1921 the Snyder store, post office and hall had burned, and her husband died less than a month later. A second Crystal column that week noted that the settlement "has been with out a store until recently," and that S. D. Breeze was using his house as a store about two miles from the post office.

The column printed on December 6 went further: "Crystal will be almost deserted this winter, as most of the people have decided to move away." A line on the same page, only partly legible in the scan, seems to say that a Miss Green was looking after the post office while Mrs. Snyder was in town.

Then sickness came. The column printed on December 13 reported:

Delebert Fannin son of Mrs. and Mr. M. Fanin and Fred Snyder son of Mrs. W. C. Snyder are reported to have the Scarlet Fever. As the result they appointed Mrs. Martin Hayden P. O. mistress and she moved the mail to her home.

The children gave no other reason. The boy printed as Delebert was probably a son of Moses and Cora Fannin. Mrs. Martin Hayden was Margary Howells Hayden of the Hayden family, whose husband had homesteaded at Crystal. The same column said that F. C. Reiger had gone to Pocatello to work for the winter, and that sleighing and skiing were beginning to be "the main sport at Crystal, as there is plenty of snow."

Who went

On December 20 the news was of sickness and packing. The Crystal Central school's Christmas program was put off until after New Year's "because of so much sickness in Crystal," and two more Fannin children were ill. The Butterfields were getting ready to move, and a Mr. J. Gelbert "is gitting ready to move away from Crystal but does not know where he is going."

The last column of the year counted the departures. Mrs. W. C. Snyder had "moved to Pocatello to make her home." The Butterfields were moving to American Falls, and Spence Breeze, probably the S. D. Breeze of the house store, had moved away. The Fannin children had recovered. At a school meeting at Mr. Wright's it was decided to close the Lapland school and open the Gabbert school, with Miss Nelson to teach there from January 2.

For the county as a whole, the Press opened 1924 on a hopeful note: "There is less talk about 'leaving the country' and more about this being 'a pretty good place after all.' Many who left wish they were back."

Spring 1924

At Crystal the leaving went on. On March 6 the Gabbert school's reporter wrote, "Mr. Gabbert is going to leave Crystal. He is going to make his home at Tyhee." Others went out for work: on March 20 the same school noted that Victor Green of Crystal was working in Pocatello "at the present." On March 27 came the line "L. A. Whiting and family moved to Pocatello."

Yet the same columns show a settlement still very much alive. On March 6 the Gabbert school reported Sunday school and a Bible class in the Wrensted home, and on March 20 the Crystal school wrote, "There are twenty-two children going to school." On March 27 the Gabbert school told of a supper at the Martin Haydens' for "the young crowd of Crystal valley" and a baseball meeting at Mr. Dickerson's, though "the snow is flying sixty miles an hour." The same column reported:

Last Monday a dance was given by the Relief Society of Crystal at the Mormon church. Prizes were given also lunch was served at a later hour.

Debt was in the paper too. In February the First National Bank of Pocatello won a foreclosure judgment of $814.90 against Moses and Cora Fannin, and the sheriff advertised their 160 acres for sale on March 14. In April the Press reported complaints that "Crystal Highway District now pays the largest school and road tax of any section of the county," and that the mail service was "quite unsatisfactory." In September the county treasurer listed tracts with unpaid 1920 taxes on which the county would take tax deeds unless they were paid by January 4, 1925; in the Crystal township the names included W. C. Snyder, L. A. Whiting, Victor Green, Ezra and Eldred Burwell and Moses Fannin. The papers read for this post do not say how the sale or the tax certificates turned out.

The forecast and what followed

On April 26, 1924, the Salt Lake Tribune reported from Washington that "Mrs. Margery Hayden" had been appointed postmaster at Crystal, succeeding Cora F. Snyder, resigned. She kept the office in her home until her death in 1937, the longest term in its history.

The children's forecast ran ahead of events. Crystal was not deserted that winter. Its ward and school carried on, and the larger departure came after mid-1931, when drought and debt sent most of the Crystal ward to a ranch near Salmon. The columns of 1923–24 record an earlier, smaller wave of leaving.

On this site: among the Stories, Smallpox, typhoid and scarlet fever and The foreclosures of 1920–1925.