Range fires around Arbon Valley in the papers, 1988–2016

Between 1988 and 2016 the newspapers reported a run of range fires in and around Arbon Valley. Several burned on Fort Hall Reservation land at the valley's north end, others in the valley itself. The reports count acres, agencies and aircraft; read with the valley's own accounts, the later ones also show neighbors turning out with tractors.

Two fires along the highway, 1988

North of Pauline the valley meets the Fort Hall Reservation, whose boundary was moved about five miles south in the 1930s (see Pauline and West Fork).

On Friday, June 17, 1988, a wire report from Pocatello in the Herald Journal of Logan, Utah, said two range fires burning sagebrush and juniper on the reservation had burned at least 5,000 acres. The Mosho fire, about four miles northwest of Pauline on the east side of the Arbon Valley Highway, had grown from 2,000 acres on Thursday night to 3,500 by Friday morning. The Beacon fire, four miles farther north on the west side of the highway, had grown from about 30 acres to about 1,500. Officials expected both to be contained that evening; the figures came from Scott Power, a Bureau of Land Management spokesman. The report does not say how they started, how large they grew or who fought them.

Fisher Springs, 2000

The Associated Press called the 2000 wildfire season the worst since 1996. Its roundup in the Herald Journal on July 28 reported that near Pocatello, "on the Fort Hall Indian Reservation in Arbon Valley," the Fisher Springs Fire had burned 21,100 acres and destroyed four outbuildings, and crews had secured line around 75 percent of it. An eastern Idaho fire dispatcher, with about 50 fires going, said they were "spread really thin."

Two days later the Ogden Standard-Examiner reported that range fires including Fisher Springs, Flat Top west of Aberdeen and Coffee Point northwest of Springfield had burned more than 130,000 acres, according to Rainey Marshall, a fire information officer. Neither paper says where in the valley Fisher Springs lies, how the fire started, whose outbuildings burned or how large it finally grew.

The Bowen Fire, 2010

Ten years later Sean Ellis of the Idaho State Journal reported the Bowen Fire. It started about 3 p.m. on Saturday, August 21, 2010, about three miles northeast of Arbon, and officials believed it was human-caused. High winds fanned it that night; by 8 p.m. Sunday it had burned 6,690 acres of grass, brush, grain fields, juniper and Douglas fir and was half contained. About 230 fire personnel worked from a base camp near Pauline. The fire threatened up to ten homes, a high-tension power line and grazing allotments. No evacuations were ordered, though some homeowners left on their own. With rain and cooler weather on Sunday, a spokeswoman for the Eastern Idaho Interagency Fire Center, Susan Wheeler, said, "It's just creeping and smoldering."

Valaree Estep's account on this site, Fire in the Valley!, does not use the name, but it describes a human-caused fire that began at the same hour on the same Saturday, almost certainly the same fire. She wrote that it started at "the Lee Baily homestead" and was nearly out when a spark jumped almost 800 yards into wheat stubble. Within minutes tractors from all over town were coming down from the fields and water trucks were driving in from farm sites and meadows, and farmers' discs tore firebreaks in the sagebrush. BLM crews, aircraft and Fort Hall firefighters soon joined them. The fire ran northeast up the east side of the valley toward Rattlesnake and was contained on Monday, August 23.

The accounts differ. The Journal says no evacuations were ordered; the valley account says the BLM asked some families to leave, though all were home by nightfall. And the Journal's 6,690 acres was Sunday evening's figure, while one rancher reckoned the fire burned 8,000 to 10,000 acres.

No fire department to call, 2012

When lightning started a fire in Knox Canyon on July 11, 2012, the valley's new emergency text system sent its first alert; sheep were moved and tractors stationed to protect fields and, if need be, homes.

That summer Michael H. O'Donnell of the Idaho State Journal wrote about how the valley fights fire, in a story this site reprinted that October. When lightning starts a fire in Arbon Valley, he wrote, no one calls the fire department: "There isn't one to call." Neighbors phone around until someone can see the smoke, then bring whatever equipment they have. One night lightning started a fire at 1:15 a.m. on the back side of the range where the Charlotte Fire had burned 66 homes in June. Within 40 minutes it was out, and the 15 people who had fought it had time to talk, some with pajama tops tucked into their trousers.

Hans Hayden, a lifelong Arbon farmer and probably of the Crystal Hayden family (whose history on this site names a Hans among Ben Hayden's sons), kept a bulldozer and a pickup carrying 250 gallons of water ready. O'Donnell wrote that he had answered fires this way for 40 years. Hayden counted everyone in the valley as part of the volunteer fire department, and he said that while he sometimes needed the BLM's planes, a tractor with a disk was far faster on a range fire.

The Power Line fire, 2016

On Wednesday, August 10, 2016, a fire was reported about 3 p.m. in the Starlight Creek Road area, on Fort Hall Reservation land about 15 miles southeast of American Falls. Local News 8 called it the Power Line fire. The DC-10 tanker based at Pocatello Regional Airport took off about 5 p.m., and other air tankers and a helicopter joined it. More than 60 firefighters from five agencies worked the ground, and the Idaho State Journal reported, "Local farmers also assisted by using their tractors to create fire breaks." Flames came close to houses and power lines, but as of late Wednesday no injuries, evacuations or damaged buildings had been reported. About 500 acres had burned by 10 p.m.

By Thursday the fire had been mapped at 3,106 acres, and Fort Hall Fire Chief Brian Briggs said in Debbie Bryce's Journal report that it had burned more than 4,000. It was 10 percent contained. The BLM, the Caribou-Targhee National Forest and the Power County and Chubbuck fire departments assisted the tribe's firefighting resources, and officials thought lightning from several days earlier had most likely started it.

It was not the Powerline Fire of August 2017, a separate and larger fire.

On this site: The Mosho and Beacon range fires, Fire on the east side of the valley and Lightning fires and the farmer firefighters.