Mendon in winter, Arbon in summer: the Cache Valley homesteaders

In the decade after 1908 the Logan newspapers' town columns recorded a seasonal journey. Each spring families from Mendon and other Cache Valley towns in northern Utah went north to homesteads and dry farms in Bannock Valley, as Arbon Valley was often still called, and each fall many of them came home for the winter. Arbon was in Oneida County, Idaho, until Power County was created in 1913.

"Coming in fast"

Mendon men such as the Andersen brothers had been in the valley since the 1890s. On January 1, 1908, the Logan Republican reported:

Fred Larsen, of Mendon, recently returned from Bannock valley, where he and his brothers are running cattle. In speaking of the advancement of the country, he says that homesteaders are coming in fast, seeking for locations. Sheep and cattle are doing fine in that section of the country.

In January 1910 the Logan Journal's column from Greenville, now North Logan, reported that Maughan Bros. and C. A. Hibbard, "who have been homesteading land in Bannock valley, are enjoying home life again."

The Mendon column

From 1911 the Logan Republican's Mendon column followed the traffic week by week to two places: Arbon, and Buist at the south end of the valley, where the Richards, Willie and Buist families of Mendon had filed on homesteads in 1909.

By early April 1912 Mr. and Mrs. John Anderson had gone back to Arbon "after spending the winter here," Lonnie Wood had gone out "on his homestead," and Willard and Emer Richards had left for their dry farms at Buist. In May four Walkers, among them Gerald, George and Helen, went to their Buist homesteads, and so did Floyd and Pierce Hardman and Mrs. Laura Hardman. In June Mr. and Mrs. Will Buist went out. He was probably the Mendon homesteader William E. Buist, the likely namesake of the Buist post office.

Women held claims of their own. In June 1911 Mrs. Willis Hardman came home from Buist after "living on her homestead for two months," and in July Mrs. Poulson came in from Arbon, where she too had been living on her homestead. To prove up and receive title, a homesteader had to live on the claim and farm it; a law of 1912 allowed up to five months away each year.

Fall brought them back. In late 1911 Ammon and Frank Sorensen and Pierce Hardman came in from their Buist homesteads "for the winter," and John Anderson and family moved in from Arbon. This was almost certainly John C. and DeSena Andersen. Their son Mark was born in Mendon on February 15, 1912, and George Andersen's memoir remembers that his brother's family left for that winter while he and Beth fed their stock through snow over the fence posts. When the Andersons went home to Arbon again in the summer of 1913, they had been visiting their parents in Mendon and in Smithfield, DeSena's hometown.

The traffic ran both ways. Jerry Baker and Chauncey Payne of Arbon were to spend Christmas 1911 in Mendon, and on April 25, 1912, Mae Gardner of Mendon and Chauncey Payne were married at Malad. "Mr. and Mrs. Payne will make their home in Arbon, Idaho," the column said.

The season of 1913

In February 1913 the column reported the funeral in Mendon of Andrew, the four-year-old son of Mr. and Mrs. Otto Anderson. He was probably the Andrew Otto Andersen of the site's Otto Andersen history, which gives his death as February 1912, but the Mendon column that reported the funeral is dated February 23, 1913. In June Otto Anderson moved his family to Arbon.

At Buist, Vance Walker went out in late April "to stay all summer," and the same day Pierce Hardman was brought home with spotted fever. In late June Henry Sorenson and John Gardner came home from Buist: "They say that the crops are fine." By August Pierce Hardman was going out again. In September a member of Mendon's Willie family, probably Willard Willie, fell from a load of grain he was freighting at Buist; the wagon ran over his arm and broke it in two places, and he was brought home to Mendon.

"Most all the settlers are from Cache Valley"

In January 1914 Bishop W. F. Kowallis of the Meadow Ward, formed at the north end in 1911, visited Logan, and the Logan Republican reported:

Most all the settlers are from Cache Valley, some of them from Washington in the north west. He urges upon young men who are not already established to turn their attention to Bannock valley, where there are lands open for settlement. Several young men who went there years ago have made good progress and do not desire to return to Logan where they were practically living from hand to mouth.

Other towns kept the same calendar. From North Logan, Andrew King came home in June 1913 "delighted with that country," where his son John was dry farming, and in May 1917 Mrs. Ruby King and her children left for Arbon to spend the summer. In November 1917 the Davis County Weekly Reflex reported:

Owen A. Wall, who emigrated to Arbon, Idaho, some four years ago, has returned to Kaysville with his family and is now living on the old homestead with his mother on the Mountain road. ... He will return in the spring and put in a wheat crop but he says the snowfall in that country, while good for a wheat crop, is not calculated to bring it into favor as a winter resort.

Others wintered at Malad. In April 1916 Henry Daniels's family and Perry Lusk, probably the site's Perry Park Lusk, moved back to Pauline from Malad, and in November 1918 Mr. and Mrs. L. D. Haws came in from Buist to spend the winter there.

Looking back

Peter Larsen, a Mendon schoolteacher and mayor, made one of the first Summit homestead entries in 1901. A 1951 birthday profile said he had lived at Arbon most of the time since leaving teaching in 1912; a 1944 notice, which put his homesteading in 1915, does not agree with the land record. A 1986 birthday notice for Lucille Hillyard, born Lucille Bird in Mendon, who married Gwen Hardman in 1913, said they homesteaded a farm at Arbon and later moved to Mendon so the children could go to school during the winter. At Buist the Latter-day Saint ward met only from April to October, the site's Buist history records, because most families moved to town for the winter.

Mendon in winter, Arbon in summer: the Cache Valley homesteaders

"Coming in fast"

The Mendon column

The season of 1913

"Most all the settlers are from Cache Valley"

Looking back

Sources

Connected histories

Buist

Andrew "Otto" Andersen

Pauline and West Fork