In January 1911 a heavy rainstorm fell on the snow of Arbon Valley, often called Bannock Valley in those years and still part of Oneida County, with its county seat at Malad. Bannock Creek flooded, three children drowned at a crossing, and by spring every bridge on the creek was reported gone. The American Falls Press and the Deseret Evening News reported the loss, and the Press followed the bridges to a county bond vote.
The column from Arbon
The Press of February 18, 1911 carried "Arbon Valley Notes" from its correspondent in the valley. It opened with the ordinary news of a winter: a family visiting in Samaria, W. A. Nunnely buying the Clayton brothers' sawmill, and about seven inches of snow on the winter wheat. "Many surprise parties have been had in the valley this winter," the correspondent wrote.
Then the column turned to the flood. On a January day whose date cannot be read in the digitized page there had been a "tremendous rain storm." The floods were bad, "all snow went with it," and bridges were taken out along the Bannock. The column went on:
Three children met death in the floods which swept away the wagon in which were the families of E. T. Anderson and D. C. Dalton. The little son of Mr. Anderson and two children of the Dalton family were drowned.
E. T. Anderson was Ezra Taft Andersen, as the family spells the name, and D. C. Dalton was Dell C. Dalton. Neither report printed the children's names. The site's Stories entry names them: Nicholas Andersen, and George and the baby Dora Dalton.
Word from Malad
The news had already reached Malad. A letter from there, printed in the Deseret Evening News on February 4, said word had just come of the drowning of three children at Arbon. The families of Del Dalton and Ezra Anderson had been returning home from a neighbor's in a sleigh, not a wagon, when it overturned and threw them into the water. All were rescued except "two children belonging to Mr. Dalton and one belonging to Mr Anderson."
The same letter said the unceasing rain of the past few days had brought one of the worst floods in the history of the Malad Valley and washed out the bridges throughout that part of the valley. Other Malad letters on the page tell of streams overflowing and travel stopped, and of a party bound for Samaria that drove into Devil Creek without knowing the bridge was gone; one of their horses drowned. At Rockland, the Press reported, the creek had flooded the low meadows and carried away private bridges.
These reports, printed in the first days of February, suggest the storm was at its worst late in January, but the day of the accident at Arbon is still unsettled. As the Stories entry sets out, the site's timeline gives January 18 and Find a Grave January 30; the entry also gathers the family accounts of that night.
Every bridge on the Bannock
On March 11 the Press reported that the Oneida County commissioners would ask voters to approve bonds. The money would pay off outstanding county warrants, the IOUs issued for bills the county could not yet pay, and replace bridges washed out by "the unusual storms of the past two months." Many bridges in Cache and Malad valleys were gone, the paper said, and some near Arbon and Rockland.
On March 18 the Press reported that Marshal Johnson had been in town from Arbon early that week. He said "every bridge on Bannock creek went out last month during the floods," and that the people wanted "three bridges across the Bannock and one across Rattlesnake." Since he spoke in mid-March, "last month" would mean February; the county, too, had spoken of two months of storms. He also said the snow was gone and farm work would soon begin.
In the March 18 issue the Rockland correspondent wrote of washed-out bridges and gullied roads around Rockland: "It has been many seasons since such a condition of roads has confronted any one." Commissioner May told the correspondent that with so many miles of bad road in his district, he would have to visit the Arbon, Rattlesnake and other sections for plans and estimates before letting repair contracts.
The bond vote
On April 1 the Press printed the commissioners' list of work; the amount asked would be about $60,000, about half of it to retire warrants. Most of the new bridges on the list were to be steel or concrete. For Arbon the list named a wooden bridge across Bannock Creek near Perry Lusk's place. Perry Lusk had been ranching on the West Fork since 1906.
The formal notice of election appeared on April 29, dated April 20 and signed by John J. Evans as clerk of the board of county commissioners. It asked for just under $24,000 in road and bridge bonds, with the warrants to be paid off by a separate issue. For the valley it listed a wooden bridge across the Bannock near a place the digitized text reads as "Aobles," probably the Noble homestead at what became Pauline. Whether this was the bridge listed near Perry Lusk's on April 1 is not known. It also listed "one wooden bridge across Rattlesnake creek in Bannock valley, $300," and $500 for "completing grade of Malad Arbon road." Meanwhile the commissioners were letting bridge contracts elsewhere in the county, each "on condition that the bond election carries."
Not everyone liked the plan. On May 6 the Press reported that one man thought he would have to vote against the bonds because so many iron bridges were specified; he believed wooden ones would serve and cost much less. The paper said it was no bridge expert, but:
It is iron and concrete bridges or none and the Press will have to favor the bonds because many of the improvements are imperative, and the others badly needed.
The date of the election and the count of the vote have not been found. By May 25, though, the Press reported that the commissioners would meet on June 17 "to sell the bond issue recently voted." The papers read for this post do not show whether or when the Bannock and Rattlesnake bridges were built.
On this site: the Stories entry on the drowning, Melinda Campbell's Valley Tragedies, the history of Ezra Taft Andersen and Eva Arbon Andersen, and the story of the first engineered road out of the valley.
Sources
- American Falls Press, February 4, 1911, page 3
- Deseret Evening News, February 4, 1911, page 11
- American Falls Press, February 18, 1911, page 4
- American Falls Press, March 11, 1911, page 1
- American Falls Press, March 18, 1911, page 3
- American Falls Press, March 18, 1911, page 6
- American Falls Press, April 1, 1911, page 1
- American Falls Press, April 29, 1911, page 4
- American Falls Press, April 29, 1911, page 7
- American Falls Press, May 6, 1911, page 1
- American Falls Press, May 25, 1911, page 4