In the spring of 1915 the farmers of the Arbon Valley began buying automobiles. Between May and November the valley columns of the American Falls Press named ten valley men with cars of their own, among them the local Ford agent, and in June counted about fifteen cars in the valley.
Before then, the cars that turn up in the valley's news had mostly come out from town. The earliest on record, as the site's first automobiles entry tells, carried an American Falls party out to a meeting in the valley at the end of 1910. At the end of June 1914 DeWitt Brown drove Dr. Noth's car out to Arbon to fetch the doctor's brother, Herman Noth, when their mother died.
After the frost
The summer of 1914 had been a hard one. On July 2 the Press ran the headline "FROST GOT WHEAT CROP." E. Keeler, over from Arbon, reported frost damage a couple of weeks earlier and believed no more than a third of the Bannock Valley acreage would be harvested. Early in July Bishop Joseph N. Arbon and T. B. Evans came over from Arbon to ask the county board of equalization to lower the valuation of real estate in their part of the county, because "the recent frosts destroyed practically all of the wheat crop." The paper's account fits the June frost that George Andersen remembered in his memoir.
The next spring was wet. "The spring rains continue and the crops are looking fine," the South Arbon correspondent wrote at the start of June 1915. "They are a month earlier than usual."
A spring malady
The Arbon column of May 6, 1915, put a name to it. The correspondent reported that several Arbonites were "contemplating buying new cars this year," and it seemed "to be a spring malady." Some farmers were looking through auto supply catalogues and studying the question of tires and upkeep. The same column noted: "Marsdon Tallon is agent for the Ford car in this vicinity." He was probably the M. V. Tallon of later records.
A week later, Ed Davis had "learned how to crank his new automobile" and had been out sightseeing on Sunday. By May 20 he had driven to Malad on business: "He made the trip in his new car." Malad City, the seat of Oneida County, to which Arbon had belonged until Power County was formed in 1913, lies to the south, and several of the new cars came from there.
The South Arbon column, which carried the news of the Summit and Highland neighborhoods at the south end of the valley, reported on June 3 that Roy Smith "has gone to Malad to get a new Ford," and that W. A. Nunnelley had gone to Stone, near the Utah line, in his new car. The same week the Arbon column said that "Jerry Baker recently came back from Malad with a new Ford."
On June 17 the South Arbon correspondent reported that a Mr. Howell, probably the teacher L. E. Howell, had just come back from Pocatello with a Ford. The column went on:
Jerry Baker and W. T. Ferguson purchased new cars and have been in Malad after them this week. There are about fifteen in the valley now, and there will be several more by fall if we are not visited by another big frost as we were last year.
It is not clear whether "the valley" meant the whole valley or only the south end, or whether the two reports of Jerry Baker's car describe one purchase or two. The same column added that Vance D. Walker "has recently bought a new motorcycle."
What the cars were for
The columns show the cars in use at once. In June Marsdon Tallon took Mrs. John Bullock and her daughter, Mrs. Jess Ellis, to Pocatello in his car. Late in August, when Lorenzo and Chloa Bailey's son Bard fell suddenly ill with appendicitis, he was taken "immediately to the Pocatello General hospital in the car of Jerry Baker." His appendix had burst before they reached town, and he was operated on a few minutes after they arrived. Bard Bailey lived until 1984, as the Bailey family history records.
In the fall the cars carried families south to Cache Valley in Utah, where the Jenson family, among others, had come from. On October 7 the South Arbon column reported that Joe Jenson (spelled Jensen in the first item) had bought a Ford, and that he and his family had gone to Logan, "making the trip in their new car." Two weeks later J. P. Sorenson took his family, with Mrs. Laura Hardman and her little daughter Cloteal, to Mendon in his new car. In November, "Albert Swenson has purchased a new Ford."
Roads, bridges and wagons
The roads had not caught up with the cars. Roads out of the valley crossed the Fort Hall Reservation, and in June the Arbon column complained that the bridges on the reservation over Birch creek and Michaud were in very poor condition: "Many of the bridges are out completely, which makes travel very bad, especially with loads." Late that month good-roads boosters motored out to inspect the valley, and the column explained: "Pocatello wants Bannock valley trade and they want to improve the road between there and Arbon."
One evening in October, L. E. Howell set out for Pocatello with Joseph Swenson, Miss Elery Andrews and Miss Dorothea Neilson. Going "at about 20 miles," he ran off a bridge, and the car upset in about two and a half feet of water. All four escaped unhurt. The paper did not say which bridge it was. It went on:
They did not even have a match to build a fire so they had to walk all night to keep from freezing. The next morning they got some men with teams and got the car out and managed to get it to Pocatello where they got it repaired. One axle was badly bent and the top about riddled.
The cars carried people, but horses still hauled the grain. In November the South Arbon column reported that Frank Sorenson had lost a horse at Malad, where he had gone with "a four horse load of grain." In December the North Arbon correspondent wrote that the roads in parts of the valley were so muddy they were "almost impassable for cars." The site's story of the first trucks takes up the hauling from 1918.
On this site: the first automobiles entry follows the valley's cars into 1917. See also the Jenson and Davis family histories and the Summit area history.
Sources
- American Falls Press, July 2, 1914, page 1
- American Falls Press, July 2, 1914, page 5
- American Falls Press, July 16, 1914, page 5
- American Falls Press, May 6, 1915, page 4
- American Falls Press, May 13, 1915, page 8
- American Falls Press, May 20, 1915, page 8
- American Falls Press, June 3, 1915, page 4
- American Falls Press, June 17, 1915, page 1
- American Falls Press, July 8, 1915, page 2
- American Falls Press, September 2, 1915, page 8
- American Falls Press, October 7, 1915, page 1
- American Falls Press, October 21, 1915, page 7
- American Falls Press, November 11, 1915, page 5
- American Falls Press, December 2, 1915, page 3