Prospecting for ore and coal around Arbon, 1903–1920

In the late summer and fall of 1903, and again between 1914 and 1920, the newspapers carried hopeful reports of ore and coal in the hills around Arbon. Some of the men who came looking were from Ogden and Pocatello, and valley families staked claims and formed a coal company of their own. Arbon lay in Oneida County until Power County was formed in 1913.

A "new bonanza" in 1903

On August 26, 1903, the Salt Lake Telegram reported that George F. Busch of Ogden had stopped in Salt Lake City with ore specimens and "a story of fabulous riches." For a small sum he had taken an option (the right to buy within a set time) on three claims held by an old prospector, who had drifted into Ogden looking for something "more convenient to handle than Idaho mining claims." Busch left the railroad at Pocatello and struck off southwest across the Fort Hall Reservation, which the paper calls the Bannock Indian reservation. The claims lay in Oneida County, about twenty-five miles southwest of Pocatello and not far from Arbon.

Busch described a band of mineral-bearing rock about forty feet wide, with ore breaking the surface every ten to a hundred feet, "chutes of it as large as a house." The rock looked to him rich in gold and silver, though as far as he knew none had been assayed (tested for its metal content), and he had brought specimens to Salt Lake for that. He thought it strange that miners had passed the ground by:

There has been no development work whatever done within a number of miles of these claims so there is no telling what may be beneath the surface. From surface indications, however, I formed the belief that a little development will reveal a vast body of ore.

If the assay proved good, he said, he would buy the claims and begin work. No later report of Busch or his claims has turned up.

Two prospects in the valley

The Arbon correspondent of the American Falls Advertiser mentioned two prospects that fall, in items that survive as reprints in the American Falls Press's "16 Years Ago Today" column of 1919. The September reprint's date line reads 1902, but the series runs from August 1903 into 1904, so the item probably first appeared in September 1903:

Messrs. Fargo and Williams are working on a prospect in the mountains on the east side of the valley. A few years ago considerable work was done here. Then it was abandoned. It is to be hoped that something encouraging will develop this time.

In October the column added: "The Messrs. Winslow with a third party are working their prospect again." The papers give no first names and do not say what the men hoped to find.

The Bannock Valley Coal Company

By 1914 the hope was coal. That August the Pocatello Tribune reported, in a story other Idaho papers reprinted, that L. B. Evans of Arbon Valley had brought samples of bituminous coal to Pocatello from a vein about nine feet thick. About ten men meant to lease the land from the government as the Bannock Valley Coal Company.

On August 27 the American Falls Press reported the company's incorporation, with J. H. Bullock as president, L. B. Evans vice president, Wm. Allard secretary and D. B. Ripley treasurer, "to develop a coal mine which is located on Birch creek in the Bannock Valley." L. B. Evans was Lorenzo Bowen "Ren" Evans, one of the valley's first settlers, not L. L. Evans of American Falls, whose name appears on the same page. The other officers were probably the Arbon men John H. Bullock, William Allard and David B. Ripley.

The papers disagree about where the vein lay. The reprinted Pocatello story says "on the reservation," while the Montpelier Examiner says "on the forest reservation." The first would mean the Fort Hall Reservation and the second a national forest. An Arbon item of 1916 mentions land "near Birch creek on the Indian reserve," which suggests, but does not prove, that this Birch Creek was on the reservation. In July 1915 the Press passed on a Pocatello report that "about a month ago in the Arbon valley a new vein of coal was discovered," which some thought ran under the Arbon and Rockland valleys to Raft River. Whether this was the Birch Creek vein, the report does not say.

No later report of coal mined on Birch Creek has been found. In November 1917 the Press wrote that some Arbon Valley farmers who drove to the railroad towns for their winter coal found the bins empty, and went up the canyons for pine and quaking aspen instead.

George Williams's claims

Meanwhile a Pocatello man kept coming back. In the spring of 1914 George Williams, a Pocatello grocer and city councilman, spent a week in Arbon on business about mining claims he held there. Whether he was the Williams of the 1903 prospect, the papers do not say. On June 3, 1915, the Press reported that Williams, by then mayor of Pocatello, had come out a few days before with a party of businessmen to look after his claim.

In March 1920 the Arbon column reported that Williams, "an old timer of Pocatello and former mayor," had visited at an Evans home. He and Mr. Evans had been interested in a mine for several years, and Williams, Evans and two sons, Ren and Joe, had "staked out several promising looking claims." Mr. Evans's initials cannot be read clearly in the scan. He was probably L. B. Evans, who had sons named Lorenzo and Joseph, so the "Ren" here is probably the son, not the father. Williams took samples of their new-found ore to Pocatello to be tested and expected to return within days to start work. If the output held up, the correspondent wrote, "it will be a great boost."

The two men went on to oil. By November 1921 Williams was president, and L. B. Evans vice president, of the Idaho Research & Development Company, whose test well in the Arbon district gave oil that flowed for a day before it was exhausted, while drilling went on. That well is told in the first oil well.

None of the reports found for this post says that ore or coal was ever shipped from any of these claims. In 2010 a post in the site's community archive described old, mostly caved-in mine workings up a mountain trail and asked who had owned them and what was mined. The newspapers do not place these claims closely enough to say.

On this site: Lorenzo Bowen Evans and Anna Morse, the Evans family and the Arbon area.