The Davis store at Arbon, 1914–1931

For close to twenty years many Arbon Valley families bought their groceries, flour and gasoline at the store Ed and Esther Davis kept near their ranch at Arbon. The American Falls Press mentions it from 1914 to 1921, and Esther Davis's obituary says the couple kept a store there until 1931.

Edward H. Davis and Esther Arbon, a daughter of George Arbon, married in 1892 and settled in the valley in 1894. They were among its first families. Their family history places the Davis ranch one mile west on Church Road, where it meets Bailey Road, with the store across the road to the west. Arbon was in Oneida County until 1913 and in Power County after that; the new county's seat was American Falls, home of the American Falls Press.

When it opened

The accounts disagree on when the store opened. The Davis family dates it to 1910. The site's entry on the first stores says the records show Ed Davis selling groceries from his home by 1912–13 and opening his general store about 1915. In March 1917 Mrs. E. A. Logan's history of the valley said Davis had "a fine general, up-to-date merchandise store, which he opened up about two years ago." Yet three years before that, in Arbon items the Press printed on April 2, 1914, the store was already being called new:

Mr. Ed. Davis, proprietor of the new store opened lately, is progressing well and is busy freighting out supplies to his many customers. Davis' store and the Noble Kowallis store have in a fine stock of supplies and keep busy handling most of the trade of the valley.

The Noble Kowallis store was John Noble's store at Pauline, at the north end of the valley, still known by the old partnership's name.

Freighting the stock

The papers show the stock being hauled in from Malad and Pocatello. In August 1915 Davis was "keeping busy these days freighting out supplies to his store, there being a large demand for groceries here at present, as every one is busy harvesting." By late November he had "a fine display of Christmas goods."

The Arbon columns of June 1916 followed the trade from week to week. Eddie Davis, probably the couple's eldest son, came back from Malad with a load of flour and other merchandise for the store, and the column added a notice for travelers: "Should you be motoring through Arbon valley and run short of gas the same can be had at E. H. Davis' the Arbon merchant." Two weeks later "our live merchant" had gone to Pocatello for "another big load of merchandise." The next week he left again, "with two four-horse outfits for merchandise for his store." In July 1917 a Pocatello bottling works sent out a truck load of pop for the Noble and Davis stores.

Mrs. Davis at the counter

The store was a family business. In the fall of 1917 the Press's roving farm writer, who signed himself the Pilgrim, called Ed Davis "the rancher-merchant of Arbon valley." The Davises farmed and kept livestock as well as the store. Two weeks later the Pilgrim wrote about Esther:

Mrs. E. H. Davis is one of the busiest women in Arbon valley. Besides attending to the household duties, she attends to the general store when Mr. Davis is absent. Just about the time she gets a good start at the housework in comes some rancher to buy a supply of goods at the store, and the housework has to take a back seat.

She also kept a flock of 100 chickens, he went on. That summer her 60 laying hens gave about three dozen eggs a day, and the sale of the surplus added "a considerable item to the ranch each week."

A landmark

By then the store served as a landmark. Mrs. Logan's 1917 history placed the Valley View school "about three miles south of the Central school, near E. Davis' store." When the Pilgrim visited farms that November, he located D. V. Roberts's quarter section and Sam Roderick's ranch by their distance west of the Davis store. In the spring of 1918 Roberts advertised his "160-acre dry farm, half mile west of E. H. Davis' store." In April 1921 the Arbon column still placed "the Valley View school near the E. H. Davis store" when its teacher, Mrs. Ballaine, resigned. That June several farmers met at the store and at the Arbon farm to help poison squirrels, though no poison arrived.

In the pages read for this post, the store was reported shut only once. In the fall of 1918, when influenza was going through the valley, the Arbon column of November 1 reported:

The Davis store is closed until the family of E. H. Davis recover from their seige of sickness.

The same column named other families down with influenza, and it reported that the family of E. H. Davis were "all taking turns with the 'flu'," with two or three of them in bed at a time, while Ed Davis was away hunting big game in Wyoming. It did not say when the store opened again.

Until 1931

The Press pages read for this post say nothing more of the store after 1921. Esther Davis's obituary in the Deseret News of April 6, 1954, fills in the end. It says the couple made their home at Arbon and kept a store there until 1931, and later lived at Tyhee, north of Pocatello. Ed Davis died in 1945. Esther died in a Pocatello hospital on April 5, 1954, after a long illness. No newspaper report of the closing has been found, and how the store ended is not known.

On this site: the Davis family, the Arbon area, the valley's schools, a family memory of Ed Davis bringing groceries to the snowbound Nunnelleys in the winter of 1909–10, and the later store at the Mink Creek crossroads, kept by the Daniels and Evans families.