Over the mountain to Malad: the valley's south end in 1915

In the summer and fall of 1915 the South Arbon column of the American Falls Press recorded trip after trip over the mountain to Malad. The column carried the news of the Highland and Summit neighborhoods at the south end of Arbon Valley, and week by week it shows Malad as the place where their hogs and grain were sold, where machinery and supplies came from, and where they often went for a doctor.

Malad lay south of the valley, over the divide, and was the seat of Oneida County. Arbon had gone to the new Power County, governed from American Falls, in 1913, but the school district at Highland was still an Oneida County district: in August 1915 the trustees of "District No. 12, Oneida county" bought a lot on Mamie Nunnelley's land for the new Highland school. The previous October the Press had put Malad 37 miles from Arbon by the mail route, "over a divide that is sometimes impassable in winter" except for letter mail carried on horseback or on foot. The Summit history tells how the road over Jenson Pass, begun about 1910, was built with a horse-drawn scraper and blasting powder, and how a load of sacked wheat needed six horses to reach the top of the divide. The 1915 columns simply call it the road between Arbon and Malad.

The road

On June 17 the column reported, "The roads between Arbon and Malad are in splendid condition owing to the amount of good road work." On September 2 the correspondent described a late-summer rain:

Last Thursday there was a heavy rain just across the mountain and up to Malad, but it only sprinkled enough to settle the dust here. People who went over to Malad Friday said there was still puddles of water in the road and lots of mud.

A week later the verdict was short: "The road between Arbon and Malad is dreadfully rough at present." It was on this mountain road, as the Luther Fellows family came home from Malad in July, that three-year-old George Fellows fell from the rig and was fatally hurt (his story).

Hogs and grain

The south end's fattened hogs went to Malad by wagon. The column of July 15 reported:

There were twelve wagon loads of hogs taken from around here to Malad Wednesday. They left here late in the afternoon as they could make the trip while it was cool.

There were other loads. In June Tracy Lee had taken a load over for Lucien McLarry. On September 9 the column reported that Gus Brahmstadt, George Bollinger and L. Hall had made the trip on a Thursday evening with thirty fat hogs for Brahmstadt, and in October J. R. Stott and McLarry took two more loads.

When threshing began, the grain followed. By September 9 Ed Hooker and Roy Smith had each taken a load to Malad, and a week later W. H. Smith and a neighbor each hauled a load of wheat there for Mr. Nunnelley. In November Frank Sorenson went over with "a four horse load of grain" and lost a fine horse while he was in Malad. Not all the grain went south. In mid-September Arbon news on the same page of the Press said the roads on the Fort Hall Reservation, the way north, were "nearly impassable for those freighting grain."

Machines, doctors and news

Malad was also where the south end went for equipment. Late in August Albert Lickingteller made a trip there after a header, the machine that cut the heads off the standing grain. Thomas King bought a new threshing machine and went to Malad after it, and by September 9 he and his sons had brought it home. Nunnelley went over for a new belt for his sawmill, W. H. Smith for a new cylinder for his well, and Roy Smith, Jerry Baker and W. T. Ferguson for new cars. Mr. McIntyre, the contractor building the Highland school, brought carpenters over from Malad.

The south end also looked to Malad for doctors. In August, when Jack Folsom was very sick, a doctor came over from Malad to see him. Clyde Johnson had a growth removed from his face in Malad, and Mamie Nunnelley spent a week there having dental work done. Guy Benson, the schoolteacher, got something in his eye while working on the new school and had to go to a doctor, probably at Malad.

Malad was also where the south end caught the train. When Virginia Nunnelley went back to Salt Lake City in September, the Herman Noths went with her as far as Malad, and in October Mr. Nunnelley took George Biggler to Malad to catch the train for Mendon.

News came that way, and it could be slow. On June 24 the North and Central Arbon column reported that Mrs. Marsdon Tallon had heard of her sister's death in the East only after a delay: "The dispatch was delayed in Malad for three days." By the time the message reached her, it was too late for her to go to the funeral.

Fruit and the outside

Some of the traffic ran farther south. In September the Press reported valley families going to Garland and Brigham in northern Utah for fruit, and one load came to them. A Mr. Pett, apparently from Brigham, "brought a wagon load of peaches, tomatoes and melons into the valley one day last week which was quite a treat to people living so far from market."

Arbon news on the same September 16 page noticed that supplies for the Bannock Valley Telephone line were arriving at American Falls: "We hope it means us, as we would like to be connected up with the outside." In early December the long-distance line from American Falls reached Arbon (the first long-distance call), and by late 1915 a new, level county road ran north across the reservation toward Michaud (the first state highway).

Malad stayed a market all the same. On June 29, 1916, the Arbon column reported Mr. Ripley and Hen Bailey leaving for Malad with two four-horse loads of fat hogs each, with a good price at the Farmers' Union. That August George Andersen took a job at the Malad grain elevator, as the Andersen family history records.

On this site: Joseph C. Jenson and the road over the pass, and the stories of the first threshing machine at the south end, the first stage lines, the first engineered road out of the valley and the Highland school.