A skeleton in a Bannock Creek cave and Old Yank the trapper, 1960
In April 1960 men reached a skeleton, two old rifles and a powder horn in a cave in the reservation's Bannock Creek district, and a Pocatello man wondered if they were Old Yank's.
News, observations, announcements, and remembrances from the original Arbon Valley community blog.
Community blog · 2010–2020 · original publication order · stories from the old papers added since 2026
In April 1960 men reached a skeleton, two old rifles and a powder horn in a cave in the reservation's Bannock Creek district, and a Pocatello man wondered if they were Old Yank's.
In 1960 Arbon Valley cattleman Lloyd Brower told a Senate subcommittee at Twin Falls how a range quarrel with sheepmen put his cattle on the forest, and protested a 40 percent cut.
In December 1959 Lamond J. Bailey of Arbon, signing himself a surplus farmer, wrote to a Pocatello column to argue that the government should stop subsidizing farms and get out of business.
In October 1959 three-year-old David Earl Stohl was killed by a power grain auger as his father loaded grain from a granary on the family farm at Arbon.
Between 1957 and 1961 the papers followed the oiling of the Pauline road, a farm-to-market road to Hawkins and the completion of 43 miles of State Highway 38 from the Mink Creek summit through the valley.
John C. Andersen, who came to the head of Bannock Creek as a boy in the 1890s and later served his ward, a school board and a highway board, died at Clifton on August 1, 1959.
In July 1959 the Bannock Creek district lost two older men within days: Frank Bell, found dead in the creek near his home, and William Lipps, 88, a past president of its cattlemen's association.
Range fires around Arbon Valley as the papers reported them from 1948 to 1978, among them a 1958 lightning fire near Crystal that flared again and reached 3,000 acres.
On July 11, 1958, about 80 Pocatellans on a Chamber of Commerce farm tour heard that 76 farms held the 59,827 acres of cropland in the Arbon-Crystal district.
From Sod Williams's prize quarter horse in 1958 to Wade Williams's rodeo title in 2025, the papers followed an Arbon ranch family through the show ring and the arena.
In March 1958 a farmer named Bradley pushed a car out of the mud near Arbon, noticed its muddied plates and phoned the sheriff; two boys were caught at Downey 40 minutes later.
In September 1957 Indian and white stockmen rode through snow to gather about 1,200 cattle off the reservation range on Bannock Creek, and Merle Meyers, raised at Crystal, wrote it up.
For ten years Utah papers followed Sod Williams of Arbon and his quarter horses, from Poco Star's placings at Ogden to the clinics where he was billed to teach reining.
In November 1955 Clyde Jenson of Arbon Valley lent a violin described as a Guarneri del Gesù to the Utah Symphony's concertmaster for a recital and a Tabernacle concert.
D. J. Bowen, who came to Arbon Valley in 1892 and led its first congregation, died in Pocatello on September 24, 1955; his obituary looked back over 93 years.
In the mid-1950s Arbon kept a Ground Observer Corps post under Mrs. Lee Newport, and a Pocatello recruiter said half the valley's little community had trained as plane spotters.
In March 1955 Rodney Smith and Calvin Williams, two young men from Arbon Valley farms, camped six days in the deep snow of Garden Creek basin and came home hopeful about the snowpack.
Roy D. Lindley, who came to Arbon Valley in 1911 and long sat on the Power County board, was killed hunting bobcats on Bannock Creek in December 1954.
In 1954 a pickup stolen at Lava Hot Springs and a Pocatello man's body were found in Arbon Valley; that fall twenty ranchers formed a winter patrol.
Gene Bailey, 17, a grandson of Arbon's Lorenzo Bailey, left the family ranch in May 1954 and was seen walking toward the mountains; a valley rancher found his body sixteen months later.
Liza Iversen came with her family to her brothers' Arbon Valley homesteads, married the homesteader John J. Infanger in 1914, and died in Pocatello on her 56th birthday.
From a 1912 marriage to Maggie Young of Perry to a 1954 photograph at 92, the papers follow D. J. Bowen of Arbon through his later years as bishop, widower and ward teacher.
In February 1954, after about two weeks of freezing fog, frost and ice weighed down the power lines around Arbon until 12,500-volt wires sagged nearly to the ground and poles broke.
John H. Meyers, a rancher and stockman who came to Arbon Valley in 1900 and raised his family on the Crystal side, died at his valley home on October 9, 1953, at 63.
In September 1953 a man hired for the harvest on Joseph G. Arbon's ranch was charged with taking his employer's pickup, rifle and movie camera.
Married at Malad in 1903, John and Beatrice Bolingbroke ranched at Pauline for four decades, wintered in Malad, and kept their golden wedding in Pocatello in 1953.
Paul A. "Cy" Smith homesteaded with Frank Turner in Arbon Valley from 1910; valley news, school notes, the census and their 1953 obituaries follow the two men for four decades.
Twayne Austin, Pocatello's Continental Oil agent and president of the stake that took in Arbon, was killed in 1952 when his tank truck crashed on his way home from the valley.
In May 1952 Arbon Valley voted 54 to 18 to dissolve Highway District No. 3, the road district it had formed in 1918, and leave its roads to Power County.
How valley farmers worked steep dry-farm ground: Ross Saxton's contour strips in 1952, a hillside grain saver praised by Arbon men in 1960, and a combine that overturned in 1965.