On a Monday morning in November 1908, sixteen wagons loaded with sacked wheat pulled out of the Arbon settlement for Michaud switch, a railroad siding between American Falls and Pocatello. The American Falls Press told the story on its front page on November 21, 1908, under the heading "Caravan of Arbon Wheat," and printed the name of every man who drove a team.
Arbon was then in Oneida County; Power County was not created until 1913. The valley had no railroad. That fall the Press reported, on the figures of Julius Abter, who ran the threshing machine there, that the valley had grown 45,000 bushels of wheat, about twenty-five bushels an acre. A week later, after a visit from J. R. Bailey, the Arbon postmaster, the paper gave the same figure for the wheat "to be hauled out," and said an ordinary team could bring about thirty sacks to market.
Then came the caravan. The Press reported:
Sixteen wagon loads of wheat, averaging thirty-five sacks of about 120 pounds each, left the Arbon settlement Monday morning for Michaud switch, between here and Pocatello, where a car was in waiting, which was loaded for Ogden. The wheat had been purchased by a Cache Valley firm, and more will follow it in the near future.
The Monday was most likely November 16. The heading added that the car was loaded at Michaud on Tuesday morning, the day after the wagons set out. The buyer, a firm from Cache Valley (the valley around Logan, Utah, which reaches north into Idaho), is not named.
"The sixteen wagons contained about 1,100 bushels," the article went on, "and it will require about forty such caravans to market the wheat grown there this year." The figures hold together: at sixty pounds to the bushel, sixteen loads of thirty-five 120-pound sacks come to about 1,100 bushels, and forty such trips would move about 44,000, close to the 45,000 reported that fall.
Why Michaud
"American Falls is the natural market for Arbon," the Press explained, but the machinery for the grain elevator there had not arrived, and Manager Bennion of the American Falls Milling Company had almost every available warehouse full. Some Arbon wheat went there all the same: page 4 of the same issue noted that Willard Bailey, "one of the prosperous settlers of Arbon," had been in town on Saturday with wheat. The machinery came the next week, for an elevator the paper said would hold 100,000 bushels; until then Bennion had piled sacked grain wherever he had room.
The same front page reported that settlers had named Adam Affleck, Lorenzo Evans and John Payne to answer letters from homeseekers, and that $300 was to be spent at once on a new road to American Falls, expected to save ten or twelve miles. A week later the Press said the wheat waiting to come out of Arbon made finishing that road nearly a necessity. Which way the caravan went to Michaud, the article does not say.
The men who drove
The paper named the sixteen men "in charge of the wagons": Joe Arbon, Jim Payne, Chance Payne, Ed. Davis, Eynon Davis, Jule Horton, J. R. Bailey, Willard Bailey, Parley Bailey, Lorin Bailey, W. J. Barnes, John Roderick, Bert Evans, Victor Evans, Joseph Evans and Adam Affleck.
Joe Arbon was Joseph N. Arbon, who had become the first bishop of the new Arbon Ward that July. J. R. Bailey drove with three of his younger brothers, Parley, Willard and Lorin (the Bailey family). Ed Davis, probably George Arbon's son-in-law, and Eynon Davis came from two Davis families that the records do not show to be related; both are in the Davis family history. Bert Evans was the son of Tom and Susannah Evans, and Adam Affleck was married to Bert's sister Maud. Bert Evans died three months later, on February 16, 1909, after an illness of five days; he was twenty-two and was buried in the Arbon cemetery.
Jim and Chance Payne were probably sons of the John Payne named to the settlers' committee, and Jule Horton was probably Jewell Horton, who had entered a homestead near Pauline about January 1905. Who W. J. Barnes and John Roderick were, and which Evanses Victor and Joseph were, the records found so far do not make certain.
The crop and the pictures
In early December 1908 a short item on Arbon Valley ran in the state news columns of the Mountain Home Maverick, the Montpelier Examiner, the Idaho Recorder of Salmon and the Idaho Republican of Blackfoot, reporting 45,000 bushels, about fifty families and "never been a crop failure." Following the Press of November 14, it said farming had begun there about seven years before, which fits neither the Press of November 21, with its first settler fourteen years back, nor the valley's own histories, which date the first crops to 1892–94.
On February 6, 1909, the Press printed on its front page a picture captioned "Hauling Dry Land Wheat to Market From the Arbon Country," adding that the sixteen teams in the train had brought in a carload. On April 17 and again on April 24 it printed a picture captioned "Marketing Arbon Wheat. There Were Sixteen Loads in This Caravan." Neither caption gives a date, and the text alone cannot show whether the two are the same picture, but both probably show the November caravan.
The April 17 front page, in a feature for homeseekers, looked back on the season:
An ordinary team of horses will haul thirty sacks of wheat to market and two good teams will bring seventy sacks or more. Last fall about 45,000 bushels of wheat were hauled from the valley, the farmers co-operating and loading a car at a time.
Afterward
Wagon trains to Michaud went on. On December 7, 1911, the Press reported that forty Arbon residents had come into Michaud earlier that week with about 160,000 pounds of wheat, traveling as a train of wagons and loading cars "so that they will not have to stand on the tracks." Once, the paper said, trains like this would have used up the valley's whole crop; now this one hardly made a hole in it. In December 1915 the North Arbon column of the Press reported that "the old road over the reservation to Michaud" had just been given up for a new, level county road.
On this site: the Arbon, Bailey, Davis and Evans family histories; the Stories entries on the first threshing machines, the first engineered road out of the valley and Adam Affleck in December 1908.
Sources
- American Falls Press, November 7, 1908, page 1
- American Falls Press, November 14, 1908, page 1
- American Falls Press, November 21, 1908, page 1
- American Falls Press, November 21, 1908, page 4
- American Falls Press, November 28, 1908, page 1
- Mountain Home Maverick, December 3, 1908, page 3
- Montpelier Examiner, December 4, 1908, page 6
- Idaho Recorder (Salmon), December 10, 1908, page 4
- Idaho Republican (Blackfoot), December 11, 1908, page 3
- American Falls Press, February 6, 1909, page 1
- American Falls Press, March 20, 1909, page 8
- American Falls Press, April 17, 1909, page 1
- American Falls Press, April 17, 1909, page 3
- American Falls Press, April 24, 1909, page 4
- American Falls Press, December 7, 1911, page 1
- American Falls Press, December 2, 1915, page 3