Through 1917, after the stock-killing winter of 1916–17, the American Falls Press kept reporting on the roads out of Arbon Valley, which had been in Oneida County until Power County was formed in 1913. The valley got its mail by road from Pocatello and hauled its wheat by road to the railroad.
Snow and high water
In late April the Arbon column reported that Lorin Bailey, who carried the mail from Pocatello, had bought a car. By the reservation road, across the Fort Hall Reservation, he could drive as far as Mr. Bolingbroke's, near the cement bridge at Pauline, and then had to change to a sleigh. "We still have snow and plenty of it," the column added.
On Sunday, May 27, J. E. Keeler came from Arbon to American Falls to bring his daughter Nina home from high school and found the roads so bad that the trip took twice as long as usual. About then Newell Leishman, the first regular carrier on Arbon's rural mail route, carried the mail out from Pocatello on one trip. The Portneuf River had overflowed its banks near the Swanson ranch, close to the Power–Bannock county line, and stood deep at both ends of the bridge. Leishman got through mud and water to Rattlesnake, but had to ford in one place, "the water coming up into the engine of the car." "Newt says never again," the Arbon column reported.
On Monday, June 4, it was the deputy sheriff's turn. The Press reported the next day:
Fred Walworth, deputy county sheriff, made a trip through Arbon valley yesterday in his Ford and reports the roads in places as being impassible. He was stranded in a snow drift in the middle of the valley for six hours and didn't reach American Falls until this morning. He will report the condition of the roads in that section to the county commissioners and see if an attempt will not be made to have them improved. The worst roads he found were west of the Pauline school.
No report has been found of whether the commissioners acted on it. Roy Porter, who farmed a mile west of the Arbon post office, later told the paper's roving farm writer, "the Pilgrim," that the spring roads had kept his family from getting back to the ranch in time for the early work, and he was behind all summer.
Wrong turns and the mail road
Not every traveler was trying to reach the valley. In the Press of June 12 the Arbon correspondent reported that tourists bound for American Falls kept taking "the wrong road at Bannock near the pole line." Bannock was probably the railroad station of that name.
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.
John Noble kept the first store at Pauline. The valley liked to have visitors see it, the correspondent added, "but could not something be done to help the tourists."
In September the Pilgrim rode with Lorin Bailey from Pocatello up Mink Creek canyon to Crystal, on the mail route to Pauline and Arbon. In stretches the canyon road was "so narrow that if two outfits ever meet one of them will have to back up to a wider part of the road," and the radiator boiled several times and was refilled with "extract of Mink creek." In November he wrote that Bailey "beats it to Pocatello," as one of his little daughters put it, three times a week.
In the good old summer time the trips are made in his car, making the round trip easily in from seven to ten hours according to the amount of mail to be distributed. During the deep snow months of last winter it required six horses to pull the bob sled through the drifts and it was a hard and sometimes a risky proposition to carry the mails.
Lorin Bailey's family history on this site remembers the mail trip with a team, over Mink Creek Pass, as a full day to Pocatello and another full day back; the Press figure is for the car in summer.
Close calls in the fall
One Monday afternoon in September the mail auto stage met a touring car almost head on at a curve about three miles north of Crystal, and the stage driver avoided a wreck only by sending his car down the grade and around it. The Press blamed the touring car's driver for not sounding the horn. A couple of weeks later two automobiles narrowly missed each other on a sharp curve between Pauline and Crystal, and the Pauline correspondent wrote: "Just why drivers of cars try to make these turns without sounding the horn is one of the inexplicable mysteries of the universe."
The Crystal column of October 9 reported that Will Denning and his son Floyd were crossing the Portneuf River bridge south of Pocatello, near the fair grounds, with a load of grain when "the bridge broke down." Both escaped unhurt, and the horses and grain were got out "with some difficulty," but a sack of wheat was lost and a horse was "bruised quite badly." Whether the county would pay for the damage, the correspondent wrote, was not known. No later report has been found.
At the end of October the Arbon column found the roads to Pocatello "in bad shape." Ed Davis, who freighted goods to his Arbon store in his own truck, had broken it on the reservation. The same column reported that Newell Leishman had sold his car to Parley Bailey and planned to go down into Utah for the winter.
Then the roads stopped the grain trucks. Three trucks had been hauling sacked wheat from the platforms at Pauline to the railroad at Michaud, three trips a day, then two, then one, and early in November the platforms quit taking grain. This time the trouble was dry weather, not mud: the Press blamed "the abominable condition of the roads throughout the protracted dry spell." By November 16 the wheat buyers' cry was "Teams Wanted." The Arbon column of October 30 had already reported that Newell Leishman sold his car to Parley Bailey and planned to go down into Utah for the winter.
Afterward
In April 1919 J. E. Keeler, whose trip to fetch his daughter had taken twice as long as usual in May 1917, signed a call for bids, as chairman of the valley's new highway district, to gravel fifteen miles of wagon road in Arbon Valley that ran south along Bannock Creek. That year a state highway from Pocatello to Arbon was designated.
Sources
- American Falls Press, September 14, 1911, page 1
- American Falls Press, April 26, 1917, page 3
- American Falls Press, May 29, 1917, page 5
- American Falls Press, June 5, 1917, page 1
- American Falls Press, June 5, 1917, page 2
- American Falls Press, June 12, 1917, page 4
- American Falls Press, September 18, 1917, page 3
- American Falls Press, September 21, 1917, page 3
- American Falls Press, October 5, 1917, page 3
- American Falls Press, October 9, 1917, page 3
- American Falls Press, October 30, 1917, page 3
- American Falls Press, November 2, 1917, page 3
- American Falls Press, November 9, 1917, page 8
- American Falls Press, November 16, 1917, page 1
- American Falls Press, January 1, 1918, page 3
- American Falls Press, April 25, 1919, page 4
- Melinda Campbell, "Lorin Bailey," on this site
- The stock-killing winter of 1916–17, Stories, on this site
- The first mail route from Pocatello, Stories, on this site
- The first rural mail route, Stories, on this site
- The first store at Pauline, Stories, on this site
- The first grain warehouse, Stories, on this site
- Edward Henry Davis and Esther Rebecca Arbon, on this site
- The first state highway and graveled road, Stories, on this site