Between 1914 and 1922 the farmers of Arbon Valley, also called Bannock Valley, backed one plan after another to bring a railroad to their wheat. They petitioned the Oregon Short Line, offered free rights of way, and in 1916 pledged a dollar an acre on their own land. No line was ever built.
The valley had been in Oneida County until 1913 and was now in Power County. Its grain went out by wagon, most of it to Michaud, a Short Line siding about eight miles west of Pocatello. In the spring of 1914 the United Bannock Valley Booster association, then backing the Double-P Construction company's carrier system, took up a slogan: "A railroad in Bannock valley in the next hundred days instead of the next hundred years."
A petition to the Short Line
In June 1914 farmers of the Bannock, Curlew, Blue Creek and Pocatello valleys held mass meetings and named a committee that included J. R. Bailey of Arbon, probably the homesteader James R. Bailey; the American Falls Press printed his initials as J. L. They asked the Short Line for a sixty-mile branch from its Utah line to the main line near American Falls, offering free right of way and a bonus. An account of their meeting with the general manager, E. E. Calvin, said that "the cost of getting a crop out of the valleys to a railroad point is equal to the cost of raising it," and that if no steam road would build, they would build an electric line.
Late that summer L. B. Evans of Arbon told the Pocatello Tribune that the farmers had been assured "the line would receive the most favorable consideration" from the Short Line. In September the railroad's chief engineer, Carl Stradley, came overland from Malad by way of Holbrook, Landing and Rockland and went back through the Arbon Valley, with nothing to make public.
Pocatello and American Falls
By the end of 1915 Pocatello and American Falls were competing for the valley's wheat, about a million bushels a year by the Salt Lake Tribune's count. "Pocatello wants Bannock valley trade," the Arbon column of the Press wrote that July. In December a Pocatello street-railway company was reported to be settling a right of way "to and through Arbon Valley," with surveys to follow. A month later T. S. Becker, an American Falls attorney, said plans were nearly ready for a narrow-gauge line from American Falls into the valley, run by gasoline motor; its promoters promised it within five months.
A dollar an acre
On March 10, 1916, a delegation of Arbon ranchers asked the Pocatello city council to make any street-railway franchise include a road to their valley, then signed a contract with the attorneys B. A. Cummings and J. M. Stevens to "pay a bonus of $1 per acre on their land and give the company a right-of-way to construct a railroad into the valley." The promoters' trustee was S. E. Harris of Pocatello. The road would reach Michaud first; whether it then went on to Pocatello or to American Falls, Cummings told the Tribune, was "strictly up to Pocatello."
On March 18 a very large crowd met at the Central school. A subscription committee of W. A. Nunnelley, B. D. Lindley, D. B. Ripley, J. H. Fuller and L. B. Evans reported on the land signed up. The plan had grown into an independent line from Wells, Nevada, to Silver Bow, Montana, through Ogden, Michaud, Holbrook, Crystal and Arbon, which would pay because "the tonnage is already here." A line to Michaud would have to cross the Fort Hall Reservation, which came under the Secretary of the Interior, then Franklin K. Lane. The Arbon correspondent wrote:
The right of way is assured through the reservation by Secretary Lane. The Arbon Valley Railway Co. is only the temporary name. They cannot predict a railway here by next fall but there is a good chance in two years. We are sure to appreciate it as soon as we can get it.
L. B. Evans was over in the Holbrook country "in the interests of the Arbon Valley railroad," and in April meetings were held at Pauline, Central, Valley View and the Nunnelley school house. "We are earnestly looking forward to our railroad," the Arbon column wrote.
In May, after Pocatello's council refused to hold its street-railway franchise in escrow, the promoters turned to American Falls and asked its Board of Trade for a $50,000 bonus. On May 25 the Press reported that the farmers around Arbon and Holbrook had been signed up. Each was to give a note for $1 an acre, secured by a mortgage to Harris as trustee. The printed form read:
This mortgage and the attached note are given with the understanding that the same shall be null and void unless the said S. E. Harris, his successors or assigns, shall construct and have in operation a standard gauge railroad extending from American Falls southerly into the Rockland valley, via Rockland and Landing, Idaho
The form left the mileage blank and allowed two years. It named only a line out of American Falls; whether the valley's farmers signed the same form is not said. On June 19 Harris reported that "the ranchers throughout the valley are a unit for the project." It was now to be the Bannock Valley, Rockland & Southern, running from Michaud to the Utah line through Arbon, Rockland and Holbrook, with an eastern bond house advancing the money.
Too costly
On October 1, 1916, the Tribune reported that the project, though favorably passed upon by eastern engineering and bonding firms, had been judged too costly to build "under present conditions." Pocatello's Commercial Club named a committee to look into a forty-mile wagon road over Trail Creek instead.
In March 1917, writing of the neighboring Rockland valley, the Press recalled how often promoters had asked farmers for so much an acre: "Each time the farmers have agreed to contribute liberally, but the road has never been built." In July 1918 Arbon and Crystal farmers were still "considerably concerned over the question of getting their crops to market this fall." In March 1922 some in Pocatello tried to revive the idle Pocatello traction company of 1915 to build a sixty-five-mile electric line to the valley, which was said to be "exceptionally anxious to get hooked up with Pocatello." Nothing more of it has been found.
On this site: the first state highway and the first trucks follow the valley's grain by road.
Sources
- American Falls Press, April 9, 1914, page 1
- Salt Lake Telegram, June 25, 1914, page 9
- American Falls Press, July 30, 1914, page 1
- Lincoln County Times (Jerome), September 3, 1914, page 1
- American Falls Press, September 17, 1914, page 1
- American Falls Press, October 15, 1914, page 5
- American Falls Press, July 8, 1915, page 2
- Salt Lake Tribune, January 2, 1916, page 57
- Electric Railway Journal, January 22, 1916
- Ogden Daily Standard, January 28, 1916, page 5
- Salt Lake Tribune, March 12, 1916, page 5
- American Falls Press, March 30, 1916, page 7
- American Falls Press, April 6, 1916, page 3
- American Falls Press, April 27, 1916, page 6
- Salt Lake Tribune, May 7, 1916, page 40
- American Falls Press, May 25, 1916, page 1
- Ogden Daily Standard, June 20, 1916, page 10
- Salt Lake Tribune, October 1, 1916, page 14
- American Falls Press, March 29, 1917, second edition, page 1
- Salt Lake Tribune, July 2, 1918, page 7
- Salt Lake Telegram, March 31, 1922, page 24