In November 1917 the Pauline column of the American Falls Press carried hopeful news. A doctor was about to build an office at Pauline, the crossroads at the north end of Arbon Valley, and a drug store was promised. "This is hoped to be the beginning of the city of Pauline," the correspondent wrote. The next six years of columns show how far it went.
Pauline lay beside the Fort Hall Reservation in Power County (Oneida County until 1913), where the valley road met the roads to American Falls and Pocatello. John Noble had opened the first store there about 1911, and a post office named Pauline followed. By 1915 a barber, Sim Hatch, worked in a building beside the store. In June 1917 the Arbon correspondent complained that tourists were taking the wrong road at Bannock, near the pole line:
There are sign boards up stating American Falls is so many miles but there is nothing to point which road to take. Owing to the fact the road to Arbon is such a nice graded road they take it for granted it will lead them to American Falls. They all generally come as far as John Noble's store at Pauline and find out their mistake.
A doctor and a garage
The November 1917 column said that Mr. Kilgore was hauling lumber for Dr. Leo Castle's office near Clarence England's home and, in lines jumbled in the digitized page, that Oscar Brandt would move his garage there. In January 1918 the Press described Dr. Castle, formerly of Pocatello, as "the newly located doctor" of Pauline, with an office and drug store; he is the first doctor this site has found living in the valley. That winter and spring the columns show him called to a broken leg, treating burns and a schoolboy's sliver, and attending a birth in the Crystal district. On September 27, 1918, the Arbon news reported that he had closed his office at Pauline and returned to Pocatello.
Oscar Brandt was soon a soldier, and the papers say nothing more of his garage. In May 1918 a Mr. Campbell opened a garage at Tom Daniels' residence, and the 1920 census, as this site's first garage entry notes, listed an auto mechanic living at Pauline.
Two stores and a warehouse
In May 1918 Theo Daniels, probably the Theodore of the Thomas Daniels family, opened a second general store at Pauline. In September 1919 the Pauline column reported that he had sold the store to "Mr. James Thomas"; two weeks later the Arbon column named the buyer as Joe T. Thomas. By March 1920 Thomas, "the Pauline merchant," had bought a truck to haul out merchandise for his store.
In October 1917 the Nobles' daughter Isabelle, who had been "an efficient and loving little clerk in her father's store," died of appendicitis at twelve. John Noble kept his own store until 1923, by his obituary as this site records it, and in 1921 he was appointed justice of the peace for the Pauline precinct.
In the fall of 1917 Bert Wheatley bought grain at a platform at Pauline for the Intermountain Milling Co., and a Mr. Zaring bought at Ed England's place, with England "behind the scales." In March 1918 the Pauline column lamented that stormy weather was rotting the sacks at Zaring's platform and spilling the grain on the ground. At the end of that August the Zaring warehouse at Pauline opened with a dance:
A large crowd attended the opening of the Zaring warehouse at Pauline Saturday evening. Mr. and Mrs. E. E. Zaring of American Falls were host and hostess. The music for dancing was furnished by American Falls people of which many attended and several from Crystal were present. Mr. and Mrs. Zaring furnished the ice cream and the Pauline and Arbon people furnished sandwiches and cake. Everyone had a grand time.
The warehouse served celebrations too. On Pioneer Day, July 24, 1920, Pauline held races, bucking contests and a program, and the decorated warehouse was opened to the public, with free lemonade and a dance that evening, though the correspondent complained of drunken riders in the crowd. In November 1922 England reported 29,008 bushels handled there during October. The sacks went by truck to the railroad at Schiller, 26 miles away. In school notes printed in March 1924, the pupils reported that 1,617 sacks had gone out on a single Monday, and that winter the hauling sometimes stopped because Schiller was full.
The little village
The columns of these years name no hall at Pauline; its gatherings moved between the buildings it had. There was a leap-year dance in the meeting house in 1916. In 1918 people of several denominations started a union Sunday school in the schoolhouse, with no particular church at its head. On New Year's Eve of 1919 there was a dance and box supper at the schoolhouse, with John Kowallis on the accordion, and a 1920 program at the Meadow Ward meeting house helped pay for the school's new piano. The post office was in the Kowallis home; when the family went to Logan for the Fourth of July in 1920, Madeline England kept it.
In February 1922 the Pauline column wrote that "The little village of Pauline is nearly snow-bound" after a storm on a strong west wind. That September the column noted that many would soon move out because they had children going to school.
Pauline City
In November 1923 the Press began printing news written by pupils of the rural schools, and the Pauline school was the first to send items in. At a program in late November they put on a play, "Main Street Excitement," whose characters "represented some of the people of Pauline," and they printed a notice: "FOUND—A tiny screw driver on Sage-brush avenue, Pauline, Idaho." In December they wrote that Mr. Peterson, the blacksmith, was building an up-to-date shop and a garage, and they shared the school's yell:
Pauline City, Pauline City. Oh you lively town. You beat them all around. For we're from Pauline City, P-A-U-L-I-N-E.
Pauline did not become a city. This site's history of Pauline and West Fork traces families moving away from about 1917 and gives the warehouse about ten years of use; the Meadow Ward was dissolved and the post office closed in 1929. Its author reflects that had the valley kept growing, Pauline might have become a thriving commercial village with a tall grain elevator. In 1961 the Salt Lake Tribune placed a plane crash near Bannock Peak about five miles northwest of "the little settlement of Pauline."
Sources
- American Falls Press, February 4, 1915, page 5
- American Falls Press, January 20, 1916, page 5
- American Falls Press, June 12, 1917, page 4
- American Falls Press, October 26, 1917, page 5
- American Falls Press, October 30, 1917, page 3
- American Falls Press, November 20, 1917, page 3
- American Falls Press, January 8, 1918, page 4
- American Falls Press, January 15, 1918, page 3
- American Falls Press, January 22, 1918, page 4
- American Falls Press, March 8, 1918, page 4
- American Falls Press, March 26, 1918, page 3
- American Falls Press, March 29, 1918, page 8
- American Falls Press, May 10, 1918, page 8
- American Falls Press, May 24, 1918, page 4
- American Falls Press, September 3, 1918, page 3
- American Falls Press, September 27, 1918, page 4
- American Falls Press, September 26, 1919, page 8
- American Falls Press, October 10, 1919, page 6
- American Falls Press, January 9, 1920, page 4
- American Falls Press, February 20, 1920, page 3
- American Falls Press, March 12, 1920, page 3
- American Falls Press, July 16, 1920, page 3
- American Falls Press, August 6, 1920, page 2
- American Falls Press, July 22, 1921, page 11
- American Falls Press, February 24, 1922, page 7
- American Falls Press, September 28, 1922, page 1
- American Falls Press, November 16, 1922, page 8
- American Falls Press, November 15, 1923, page 8
- American Falls Press, December 13, 1923, page 6
- American Falls Press, December 20, 1923, page 2
- American Falls Press, March 13, 1924, page 2
- Salt Lake Tribune, March 25, 1961, page 21