Pasakwa Huude and other names on Bannock Creek
From 2022 to 2025 the Sho-Ban News printed tribal names for Bannock Creek, among them Pasakwa Huude, and reported an effort to replace a derogatory creek name there.
The community archive.
News, observations, announcements, and remembrances from the original Arbon Valley community blog.
10 SELECTED ACCOUNTS
Life on the land
Homesteads, irrigation, wheat, livestock, and the work of making a living in the valley.
Explore the collection ↗6 SELECTED ACCOUNTSSchool days
Class photographs, journeys to school, and memories of growing up here.
Explore the collection ↗7 SELECTED ACCOUNTSWinters & hardships
Accounts of blizzards, fires, loss, and the neighbors who helped one another.
Explore the collection ↗7 SELECTED ACCOUNTSCommunity voices
Personal recollections and observations from people who knew the valley.
Explore the collection ↗8 SELECTED ACCOUNTSRemembering our neighbors
Lives remembered in family accounts, obituaries, and cemetery stories.
Explore the collection ↗9 SELECTED ACCOUNTSGathering together
Hay Days, celebrations, and the everyday occasions that brought the community together.
Explore the collection ↗Stories from the valley’s newspapers.
363 stories of Arbon and its neighbors, retold from the newspapers that reported them, with quotations and links to the original pages.
Read the stories from the old papers ↗Browse the original records
Community blog · 2010–2020 · original publication order · stories from the old papers added since 2026
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Bringing beavers back to West Fork Bannock Creek, 2019–2021
Shoshone-Bannock Fish & Wildlife crews built 31 imitation beaver dams on West Fork Bannock Creek; two beavers were released there in the fall of 2019, and trout counts rose by 2020.
Ken Estep of Arbon, 1949–2021
Ken Estep grew up on his family's Arbon farm, served fifteen years as a Power County commissioner and chaired the regional health board until his death in 2021.
Peter Wrensted, the photographer's brother, at Crystal
Benedicta Wrensted photographed Pocatello and Fort Hall; her brother Peter, a forest officer and police chief, took land near Crystal, where his family farmed for decades.
Walter Fredrich's Bull Canyon homestead and the teacher he married
Walter Fredrich claimed land at the top of Bull Canyon in 1913 and married the Arbon teacher Rachel Fryer in 1918; the ranch he began became an Idaho Century Ranch in 2020.
A wanted poster and the 1986 labor camp killings in Arbon Valley
Two men were killed at an Arbon Valley trailer park in May 1986; years later Sheriff Jim Jeffries told how a poster in Spanish and English found a witness.
Crossfuze: the software company an Arbon man co-founded
In 2019 the *Idaho State Journal* profiled Jacob Andersen of Arbon, who co-founded the business software firm Crossfuze in 2012 and kept working from home in the valley after its sale.
The Powerline Fire of 2017 and the evacuation of Pauline
In August 2017 the Powerline Fire burned about 53,000 acres at the north end of Arbon Valley, crossed the highway several times and sent Pauline families from their homes.
From Yellville, Arkansas, to Buist: Mathew and Louise Bird
A Buist homesteader who went east on a mission in 1915 married the Arkansas convert he had baptized, and her brother later came to farm at Arbon.
Joe and Edna Arbon: seventy years married, 1929–2000
A grandson of George Arbon and the Arbon schoolteacher he married in 1929 farmed the valley until 1974; the papers marked their 50th and 60th anniversaries and, in 2000, his death.
The Women's Challenge bicycle race comes to Arbon Valley, 1996
On June 25, 1996, a stage of the PowerBar International Women's Challenge, the last major women's race before the Atlanta Olympics, ran 60 miles from Pocatello to Arbon Valley.
Waiting on rain: Arbon Valley dryland wheat, 1994–2020
Cloud seeding in 1994, one grower's best-ever crop in 2005, the heat of 2013, a wet 2017 and May rain in 2020, as the farm press followed the valley's dryland wheat.
Deer, hunters and mountain lions in Arbon Valley, 1988–2000
In 1989 Idaho's governor held up Arbon Valley's farmers and deer hunters as an example; in 1997 a rancher there opposed a lion study; in 2000 Nelda Williams shot a cougar.
Range fires around Arbon Valley in the papers, 1988–2016
Range fires around Arbon Valley from the Mosho fire of 1988 to the Power Line fire of 2016, as the papers reported them, and the farmers who turned out to fight them.
The church farm taxes that put the Arbon school at risk, 1982
In 1982 a dispute over taxes on a 6,742-acre church-owned farm in Arbon Valley threatened the Arbon school, until the church agreed to pay in a compromise with the county.
Long harvests and lean prices: Arbon wheat, 1951–1982
A harvest that ran into September in 1951, drought in 1954, rain and sprouting wheat in 1968 and a good crop at a poor price in 1982, as the Pocatello paper saw Arbon wheat.
Brett Lusk and the Arbon Valley Road crash of 1982
On August 14, 1982, a car of young people met a pickup head-on on Arbon Valley Road; Harley Hatch, 13, was killed, and Brett Lusk, 13, died nine days later.
Mabellene McKie killed in a car accident at Fort Hall, 1982
On the night of June 5, 1982, Mabellene McKie, 46, of Arbon Valley died when the car she and her husband were in hit a telephone pole at Fort Hall.
Pioneer fortitude: Arbon Valley's hard winter of 1981–82
Drifts, cold, a stalled bus and a flood warning filled the winter of 1981–82, and in February the *Journal* showed how Arbon Valley families got through it.
The state sells its school land at Pauline and Crystal, 1981
In February 1981 Idaho auctioned school endowment land in Arbon Valley; 120 acres near Pauline and a section near Crystal sold well above their appraised prices.
Willard and Mamie Andersen's golden wedding, 1981
A 1981 golden-wedding notice told the lives of Willard Andersen, a dry-farm boy who became Arbon's bishop, and Mamie Haney, who came west from South Carolina.
Sherm Swim, old-timer roper of Arbon Valley, 1980–1981
In June 1980 the Journal profiled Sherm Swim, Arbon Valley cattleman and 1979 old-timers' roping champion; the next March it pictured him and his son with a calf hurt by coyotes.
A plane down on the Johnson farm, Arbon Valley, 1980
On April 6, 1980, a California pilot bound from Idaho Falls toward Cedar City was killed when his Cessna came down in a field on a Johnson farm in Arbon Valley.
Keeping the Arbon school district going, 1971–1980
In the 1970s the state talked of merging Arbon's school district into a larger one, and in 1979 the 20-pupil district asked Idaho to let it keep a teacher who lacked his degree.
An ISU team sets out to record Arbon Valley's history, 1979
In November 1979 an Idaho Museum of Natural History crew was at work on what its curator of archaeology called the first systematic survey of Arbon Valley's historic places.
A state trooper delivers a baby in the Arbon Valley area, 1978
On July 19, 1978, a mother bound for the hospital could not get there in time, and state trooper Brad Flores delivered her daughter in a station wagon in the Arbon Valley area.
Branding day on the Sod Williams ranch, 1978
In the spring of 1978 Arbon ranchers moved from ranch to ranch branding close to 1,200 head by rope and hand, and the *Journal* came to photograph the day at Sod Williams's.
The Arbon Valley Road Race, a bicycle race from Pocatello, 1978
On May 28, 1978, senior men in a Pocatello bicycle race rode 60 miles across Crystal Summit to Arbon Valley and home again; a Salt Lake City man won.
Bannock Creek cattlemen in the 1978 forest grazing case
In May 1978 Sherm Swim of Bannock Creek and Melvin Neaman, a Shoshone-Bannock stockman from the same creek, testified on opposite sides of a federal suit over forest grazing.
Wally Hardy killed on the Arbon road, 1978
On Sunday, March 26, 1978, Wally Hardy, 40, of Bannock Creek died when a northbound pickup rolled on Arbon Road about eight miles north of the Arbon store.