In May 1920 people from every part of Arbon Valley gathered at Central Hall to say goodbye to Mr. and Mrs. David B. Ripley, who had sold their ranch on the east side of the valley and were moving to Oregon. The American Falls Press followed the family before and after they left.
A ranch on the east side
In November 1917 the Press's traveling farm writer, who signed himself "The Pilgrim," described D. B. Ripley's ranch, three and a half miles southeast of the Arbon post office. It covered 505 acres, "all in one parcel," and took in Ripley's own homestead, "filed on in 1909," along with the original homesteads of John A. and Thomas Gibbons, which he had bought. Ripley was a native of Ohio, and Mrs. Ripley's parents had been pioneers of Malad. In 1915 he was the Arbon constable.
The Pilgrim called Ripley "the first rancher to try dry land alfalfa raising in the bottoms of Arbon valley." He had 43 acres of it, 14 of them planted that spring and the older fields cut twice a year, all without surface irrigation, and in the hay shortage of the previous winter he had hay to sell while other ranchers hauled feed from miles away. Dealers often paid Mrs. Ripley more than the market price for her butter. Ripley had once run a sawmill in the Moonshine country, and some 200,000 feet of its lumber had gone into buildings in American Falls.
Since 1909 the family had lived in log cabins, the last of them "the four-room cabin erected by John A. Gibbons." That fall a new house on a concrete foundation was going up across the road, and the old cabin was to become a granary.
Selling the ranch
In February 1920 the Press announced that the Ripleys' daughter May had married Morgan L. Williams of Pauline, who had recently bought "a fine farm on West Fork a few miles northwest of Pauline." The couple were to make their home there (see Pauline and West Fork).
On May 14 the Arbon column reported that the Ripleys meant to leave for Oregon the next week, "having disposed of their home and interests here to a Mr. Lion of Oregon." No buyer by that name has been traced, and whether "Lion" was a misprint is not known. A court summons printed in 1925 shows that on April 13, 1920, Thomas S. and Marie M. Toyn gave D. B. Ripley a mortgage on 505 acres, with water rights that included a half interest in the water at the head of Bannock Creek. The acreage matches the ranch the Pilgrim described, and a biography on Find a Grave says the Toyns lived in Portland, Oregon, until 1920. The buyer was therefore probably Thomas Toyn, and the mortgage probably secured part of the price. The column did not say why the Ripleys sold.
The farewell
Two weeks later the column described the send-off:
Every section of Arbon valley was represented at the farewell reception extended Mr. and Mrs. David Ripley in the Central Hall Tuesday evening of last week. A program was given followed by dancing. Refreshments were served after midnight, after which the crowd departed, expressing regrets at the departure of the Ripleys, who will make their home in Oregon.
Mrs. J. N. Arbon chaired the committee, and Bishop John Bowen of the Arbon ward gave the prayer. Mrs. Melvin Bailey and Miss Edna Bailey of the Bailey family sang a duet, "Farewell To Thee," J. N. Arbon gave an address, and Lorenzo Evans of the Evans family gave a stump speech (the paper does not say whether this was L. B. "Ren" Evans or his son Lorenzo M. Evans). The same column noted that Earl Ripley had just finished the eighth grade at the Central school.
The Ripleys did not leave as soon as planned. On August 6 the column reported that, after a visit with May on West Fork, they had gone to their new home at Hubbard, Oregon.
News from Oregon and California
In December 1920 the Arbon column had word from Mr. and Mrs. George Bandy, another family who had left Arbon and were wintering with their daughters at Toppenish, Washington:
They made the trip from Arbon to Toppenish, Washington, in a Ford car, covering 1600 miles. The roads were fairly good and they said the Columbia highway was grand but crooked as a snake.
They had also spent two days with the Ripleys at Hubbard. "The Ripleys were old timers here," the column added. In May 1921 Mrs. Logan had a letter from Bandy, who was visiting the Ripleys; he wrote that he would soon be web-footed if he stayed long, as it was "nothing but rain all the time," and said the Bandys meant to settle near Yakima. In early June the column reported that David Ripley had been back in Arbon the week before to visit May and her husband and see old friends, and in September 1922 the Press noted "D. B. Ripley, formerly prominent Arbon rancher, but now living near Portland," in American Falls on business.
In 1924 the Press invited former residents to write home for a "Home Coming" issue. A letter that arrived too late for the March 6 issue came from James Ripley of Orland, California, probably one of the Ripley sons. It does not name his father, but it fits the family:
I have resided in Power county a great many years. My father once owned a sawmill that sawed the lumber for some of the large buildings in American Falls. In 1920 we sold our ranch in Arbon and moved to Broadacres, Oregon, in the Willamette valley. Last spring we again sold and purchased a dairy ranch at Orland, California, where we have a herd of twenty milking cows.
The Arbon columns had called the Oregon home Hubbard. That June the Press reported that Lila Ripley, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. D. B. Ripley, now of Orland, had won the prize offered by the Veterans of the Spanish-American War for the best essay on "Why I am Proud I Am an American," chosen from about four hundred entries.
In August 1925 the Press printed a summons in a suit by David B. Ripley against Thomas and Marie Toyn and others to foreclose the 1920 mortgage. How the suit ended has not been found.
On this site: the Arbon area history places the Ripley ranch on the east side of the valley, and Thirty below, and a rescue on the Pauline road records the cold of December 1919 at the Ripley place. The foreclosures of 1920–1925 and the drought of 1919 tell the wider story of those years. The Toyn ranch, probably the old Ripley place, is where the first oil well was drilled in 1921 and where Thomas Toyn was shot in 1924.
Sources
- American Falls Press, March 11, 1915, page 4
- American Falls Press, November 16, 1917, page 3
- American Falls Press, November 30, 1917, page 3
- American Falls Press, February 20, 1920, page 3
- American Falls Press, May 14, 1920, page 2
- American Falls Press, May 28, 1920, page 2
- American Falls Press, August 6, 1920, page 2
- American Falls Press, December 3, 1920, page 2
- American Falls Press, May 6, 1921, page 2
- American Falls Press, June 10, 1921, page 2
- American Falls Press, September 28, 1922, page 1
- American Falls Press, March 6, 1924, page 1
- American Falls Press, March 13, 1924, page 1
- American Falls Press, March 13, 1924, page 5
- American Falls Press, June 12, 1924, page 2
- American Falls Press, August 6, 1925, page 3
- Find a Grave, memorial 110567009, Thomas Spencer Toyn