A report from American Falls, printed in the Salt Lake Tribune on January 16, 1928, told how the mountains on the west side of Arbon Valley, between it and Rockland Valley, were found to have no name of their own, and how two of Power County's old-timers were asked to fix the omission.
A survey of names
Some months earlier, the paper explained, the "United States geographic board" had ordered a nationwide survey to establish proper geographic names. J. D. Case of Boise was appointed to take charge of the work in Idaho. The Power County data was gathered by Mrs. Cora E. Darling, the county superintendent of schools. Most of the valley (Arbon, Pauline and West Fork, and Crystal) had passed from Oneida County into Power County when the new county was created in 1913 from parts of four counties; Summit and Buist stayed in Oneida.
Mrs. Darling had been in the valley before. In the autumn of 1923 she had spent two weeks visiting the schools of Arbon Valley and Hawkins Basin. As the American Falls Press reported that November, she sometimes rode between schools on a grain rack and occasionally a farmer drove her around in a car. Once in a while she walked two or three miles rather than have anyone stop harvest to take her.
When she studied the names already in use, the Tribune said, she found that
the mountains on the east side of the Arbon valley had been named the Bannock range, and those on the west side of the Rockland valley had been christened the Black Pine range. The intervening range was without designation, probably due to the fact that its highest peak was christened Bannock peak by General Freemont, and that the mountains had been generally accepted as part of the Bannock range.
In fact, the paper went on, these mountains "have a separate entity." Once Mrs. Darling found that the range was nameless, she asked the American Falls chamber of commerce to suggest a name. The chamber passed the question to Judge W. T. Oliver and W. H. Philbrick.
Two old-timers
The paper counted both men among Power County's oldest inhabitants, and it described their task this way:
It was a little out of the ordinary, even for the two old timers, for they were called upon to correct an oversight and select a name for an orphan mountain range.
Judge Oliver was very probably the W. T. Oliver whose recollections of early American Falls the Press printed in 1915. Mr. Philbrick was very probably the Representative Philbrick who, in February 1909, used a large map to trace the proposed boundaries of a new Power County for a committee of the legislature. That report gives no initials, but a Press account printed the next month names W. H. Philbrick as the American Falls spokesman on county division at a Republican convention in Malad. The same account reports that the Power County bill was killed that February; the county was not created until 1913.
Someone had suggested naming the range for Guadeloupe Valdes, as the paper spelled the name. The paper called him a "Spanish cattleman, who was the first settler of the Rockland valley." Nothing more about him was found in the papers read for this post. That suggestion was rejected. Instead the two men chose the name Rock Creek range. It was "considered more representative of the county, and it has been recommended." Rock Creek is the stream that flows through Rockland. As a result, the paper said, the mountains lying south of American Falls, between Rockland and Arbon valleys, "will be known as the Rock Creek range."
The name on today's maps
Rock Creek is not the name on today's maps. U.S. Geological Survey place data list the range as the Deep Creek Mountains, in Power County. A modern climbing guide describes them as running about thirty miles south from near American Falls toward Holbrook, with Arbon Valley on the east and Rockland Valley on the west. The sources read for this post do not say whether the Rock Creek recommendation ever reached the geographic board. They also do not say when or how the Deep Creek name came into use.
The Tribune's explanation of the oversight needs a note too, because it rests on Bannock peak being the range's highest point. A passage headed "Progressive Bannock Valley," printed in the Press in 1917 on the same page as Jennie Logan's history of the valley, described Bannock peak, with an elevation of 8,000 feet, standing "like a sentinel guarding the approach to the lower end of the valley." But the same passage said that Bowen's Peak, on the west side of the valley near its center, was "a little higher than Bannock peak." The climbing guide gives the range's highest point as Deep Creek Peak, 8,748 feet, and places Bannock Peak, like the northern part of the range, on the Fort Hall Reservation. The sources read here do not say whether Bowen's Peak and Deep Creek Peak are the same mountain. The Tribune said that Frémont named Bannock peak, but no source read here confirms it.
On this site: Jennie Logan's history is told among the valley's firsts. The Pauline and West Fork history covers the lower end of the valley. The Arbon family history tells of Joe Arbon riding a horse up Bannock Peak for his ninetieth birthday. The timeline tells how the valley was divided between Power and Oneida counties in 1913.
Sources
- Salt Lake Tribune, January 16, 1928, page 2
- American Falls Press, February 6, 1909, page 1
- American Falls Press, March 13, 1909, page 8
- American Falls Press, April 1, 1911, page 1
- American Falls Press, February 25, 1915, page 1
- American Falls Press, March 29, 1917, page 7
- American Falls Press, November 1, 1923, page 1
- Tom Lopez, Deep Creek Mountains, Idaho: A Climbing Guide, April 27, 2014
- TopoQuest, Deep Creek Mountains, Power County, Idaho (U.S. Geological Survey data)