Crystal, the hidden settlement up Rattlesnake Creek, 1911–1917

Crystal lies in a high basin across a low divide north of Pauline, where springs feed Rattlesnake Creek and its neighbors on their way to Bannock Creek. Two reports in the American Falls Press frame its first decade: one from June 1911, when it was a new settlement in need of a schoolhouse, and a portrait in the paper's Industrial Edition of March 1917, headed "Crystal, Picturesque and Fertile."

Before it was Crystal

The basin, ceded Fort Hall land, had been open to homesteaders since 1902, but few came to stay until the end of that decade, and before it had a post office the papers placed it by its creek. In 1909 George W. Bradley of the Bradley family gave notice of proof for his works diverting water from Rattlesnake Creek, giving his post office as Hawkins, in Bannock County. A Rockland column of June 1910 spoke of "the Rattlesnake district near Arbon." That September its own post office opened under the name Crystal, and in 1911 A. R. Meacham's notice of proof for water from the North Fork of Rattlesnake Creek gave his address as Crystal.

"The settlement is new"

In June 1911 C. R. Butterfield came down from Crystal and reported "the finest kind of prospects for an abundant harvest." The Press noted how young the place was: scarcely more than half a dozen settlers "having been there more than two years, and many but little over a year."

The largest field, about 300 acres, belonged to a family the paper printed as "Whitney Sons," probably the Whitings. Andrew Jenson's later history of the Crystal Ward names Lorenzo S. Whiting among the first Latter-day Saint settlers, and in 1917 the Press counted Ralph and Reese Whiting among Crystal's pioneers. Ben McClain had 200 acres and W. C. Snyder 160, and Tom Phillips, Mr. Reddy and Mr. Bradley had good fields. Butterfield had not yet got all his own land into cultivation, but his garden "would do credit to an irrigated section."

The settlers' other concern was school:

Mr. Butterfield says the people are very much interested in school matters, and will discuss the advisability of creating a new district, they are so far away from the school board as to make the conduct of the school unsatisfactory. The number of children has increased so largely that some favor the building of two school houses.

A schoolhouse on Rattlesnake Creek was already in use that year, and in 1912 School District 14 built the Crystal Central School.

The hidden valley, 1917

On March 29, 1917, the Press published a special Industrial Edition, and its page 23 carried the portrait of Crystal, by then in Power County; until 1913 the settlement had been part of Oneida County.

The paper counted about 150 families, in a recess of the mountains so out of the way that "an invading army would never find it." The center of the settlement was about twenty miles from Pocatello and 32 miles by road from American Falls, and the way in was a narrow gash in the mountains through which Rattlesnake Creek found its way out:

The mouth of the canyon is about a mile from the main travelled road to Bannock valley but so well concealed that a stranger would never know there was any canyon there. The road leading to the canyon starts off in another direction, and to all appearances seems to be a part of the old road running down Bannock creek, toward Pocatello or American Falls. People who have known there was a road leading up Rattlesnake creek have been unable to find it.

Inside, the writer explained, lay a series of canyons opening into a valley so full of hills that it hardly looked like one:

All roads in Crystal radiate from a common center, like the spokes in a wheel. If one starts in the right direction these roads all lead to the store of John O. Johnson. If one starts in the other direction he will soon land up against an impassable mountain, with some homesteader living at the end of the road.

The farms lay at 5,000 to 6,000 feet, the highest in the county. W. C. Snyder, "one of the pioneers," raised 1,464 bushels of oats on a little over ten irrigated acres and 4,172 bushels of barley on 60 acres; Ralph and Reese Whiting took 3,132 bushels of Turkey Red wheat from 65 acres of dry land. Among "some splendid irrigated ranches," I. W. Phillips, who in 1916 had given notice of proof for irrigation water from Rattlesnake Creek, had 110 acres of alfalfa. But "the greater part of the settlement, however, is dry farmed." The paper added that Crystal "was settled later than most other parts of the county, due, probably, to its inaccessibility."

By then a fairly good road ran five miles to the Bannock valley highway, mail came three times a week on a route from Pocatello through Crystal to Pauline and Arbon, and poles were set for a telephone line to Pocatello. The paper credited three Crystal men, among them S. D. Breeze and J. C. Davis, and the Pocatello Commercial Club. On July 11, 1917, the Salt Lake Tribune reported the twenty-five-mile line in operation: the Commercial Club and Pocatello businesses had paid for it, and the people it served had done the work.

The store at the center

The Industrial Edition's John O. Johnson was almost certainly the man the Press's Crystal column called John O. Johnston, "the Crystal merchant," that fall. On October 23, 1917, it reported that the grocery store, which Johnston had run and owned for almost three years, had that week become the property of Ezra Lindsay, who would also take care of the post office. The same column reported a farewell party for Johnston at the Crystal hall before he left for Wyoming. The site's account of the Crystal store follows the Snyders and Lindsay; these items add Johnston, though they do not say whether his was the same store the site credits to the Snyders.

Afterward

In 1935 the Deseret News printed Andrew Jenson's history of the Crystal Ward. He wrote that some farms were watered from the creeks but most people depended on crops that did well only when rain was plentiful, and that drought had cost many crops. He dated the Crystal branch to 1913, when the Rattlesnake Creek Saints were moved from Malad Stake to Pocatello Stake and later organized as a branch under presiding elder John A. Brown. By the time his history appeared, drought and the Depression had already sent much of the ward away.