Standard Oil goes leasing in Arbon Valley
In the fall of 1949 Standard Oil Company of California sought state land west of Arbon, and within two months it held leases in a valley that had gone hunting for oil once before.
Depression & change, 1930–1949.
News, remembrances, and stories of Arbon Valley from two sources: the newspapers that reported the valley from the 1890s on, and the ArbonValley.com community blog of 2010–2020.
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Routine notices (meeting notices, reminders and classifieds) are left out of this list; find them under Notices.
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Charles E. Norton, a settler of the Crystal country, dies at 73
Charles Ethen Norton, who came to Idaho as a boy of eleven and had a homestead on the Crystal side of Arbon Valley by 1917, died at home on August 5, 1949, at 73.
A rancher skis out and a weasel reaches Mercer Creek in the blizzard of 1949
In the mid-February blizzard of 1949, a Rattlesnake rancher skied nine miles to report that some 60 families had gone three weeks without supplies, and a weasel brought a sick man out from Mercer Creek after a rescue plane stuck in the snow.
Santa comes to the Bannock Creek school for 104 reservation guests
Just before Christmas 1948, the West Pocatello Stake's Mutual gave a party with a Nativity program, gifts and Santa Claus for 104 guests from the Fort Hall reservation at Arbon's Bannock Creek school.
Watermelon and a new school plan for Bannock Creek
At a watermelon-fed meeting on August 31, 1948, the Fort Hall agency told Bannock Creek families that the American Falls school district would run their Indian day school that year.
Arbon Valley wheat growers band together to sell through Michaud
In July 1948 about 50 Arbon Valley wheat growers, meeting at the Pauline schoolhouse, formed a unit of an Ogden grain cooperative to market their wheat through Carl Rudeen's elevator at Michaud.
Sheepherder killed when his supply truck rolls off the Arbon road grade
Hauling supplies to his family at a summer sheep camp, herder Dick Staker died early on July 24, 1948, when his truck left the grade on the Arbon road and came down on him.
Road worker dies under a dump truck bed in Arbon Valley
In April 1948 Harold Grant Moss of Malad, a member of an Oneida County road crew, died in Arbon Valley when the tipped-up bed of a dump truck he was greasing fell on him.
A journalism student finds Arbon Valley at a turning point, 1947
In November 1947 a University of Idaho journalism student wrote up Arbon Valley for the Pocatello Tribune, catching power on the way, a new road staked out and a 1912 homesteader who had outlasted the Depression.
Two Indian women call at a Crystal farm and tell where Mink Creek got its name
In the summer of 1947 two women visited the Wrensteds at Crystal, admired the valley's wheat and told stories of their people, among them that Mink Creek was named for Jeanette's grandfather.
Frost takes a share of the Arbon and Crystal wheat in a bumper year
In 1947 a frost cost Arbon and Crystal growers a fifth to nearly all of their grain, while the rest of Power County brought in so much wheat it had nowhere to put it.
Bill Mathews, who homesteaded toward Summit, dies on Christmas Day
William Henry Mathews, who raised much of a family of thirteen on a homestead at the Summit end of Arbon Valley, died in his Pocatello home on Christmas Day, 1946.
Jewell Horton, Pauline homesteader and Arbon's justice of the peace, dies at 66
When Jewell Horton died at Pocatello in 1946, his obituary gave his Arbon Valley years one date, though the old papers show a Pauline homesteader who clerked a valley vote, judged its small cases and took in its wheat.
Big Arbon Valley wheat farms go up for sale in the Utah want ads
For thirteen years after the Second World War, Utah classified columns offered Arbon Valley dry farms of up to 1,600 acres, sold with their combines, granaries and wheat allotments, one of them for $160,000 in 1957.
Which pass brought Fremont down Bannock Creek in 1843?
A 1945 Pocatello Tribune history brought John C. Fremont down Bannock Creek to Fort Hall in 1843 by way of Garden Creek Gap, and a reader wrote in the next year to say he had crossed elsewhere.
Ed Davis, Arbon storekeeper and bishop, dies at 72; his son Orval follows in 1971
Ed Davis, who kept Arbon's general store and once served as its bishop, died in Pocatello in 1945, and his Arbon-born son Orval, a cattleman and dry farmer in the valley, died there in 1971.
Arbon sergeant wins the Silver Star at Anzio
An Arbon farm boy who rushed an enemy gun position at Anzio came home wounded with the Silver Star and later made his home at American Falls.
Searchers over Arbon Valley find a lost Stinson in the snow
In December 1944 a Stinson cabin plane bound for Salt Lake City went down in deep snow west of Kinport Peak, killing its pilot, a Bozeman mother and her baby, and two men circling Arbon Valley in a search plane spotted the wreck.
State's public works chief backs a federal road for Arbon Valley
After four years of pleading by farmers and two chambers of commerce, Idaho's public works commissioner said in August 1944 that the Arbon Valley road belonged on the list of U.S. secondary highways.
Louise Benson, bishop's wife and ward clerk at Summit, is buried in Logan
When Louise Benson was buried in Logan in January 1944, her obituary recalled the years she and her husband Joseph, bishop of the Summit Ward from 1915 to 1924, spent dry-farming at the high south end of Arbon Valley.
Arbon Valley sailor is Idaho's first choice for Annapolis
As 1944 opened, Congressman Henry Dworshak wrote Chester and Arvilla Smith of the valley that their son Frank Blair Smith, a Navy apprentice seaman, was his top pick among Idaho's candidates for the Naval Academy.
Joseph N. Williams, who grew peanuts on the Crystal divide, dies at 69
A Pennsylvania-born farmer who came to Crystal about 1914, raised peanuts in a mountain garden and left the valley around 1940 died in Pocatello in May 1943.
Two Arbon weddings, a Spanish reception and an air corps lieutenant
Within ten weeks of each other in 1942 and 1943, Hazel and Glenn Andersen of Arbon married in Utah temples, and the papers followed her Spanish-costume reception, his air corps years and his return to farm at Arbon.
Arbon farmers form a fire crew, and the county hunts scrap from the air
In the first war year Arbon farmers organized against fire, a county plane spotted old iron on Arbon and Crystal farms, and an Arbon farmer took his neighborhood's scrap money to the soldiers' canteen in Pocatello.
Arbon man's son honored for a Guam rescue, then decorated on Corregidor
In 1942 the papers twice named John R. Breeze, a Marine whose father lived at Arbon, first for pulling two youths from the water at Guam in 1940 and then for a Silver Star won on Corregidor shortly before he became a prisoner of the Japanese.
Arbon Valley's young men go to war, a few at a time
Enlistment lists, Logan society columns and one B-29 pilot's mission log trace some of the Arbon Valley men who put on uniforms in the Second World War, and where the war carried them.
Arbon Valley and Crystal farmers sign up for electric power
At the close of 1940 farmers of Arbon Valley and Crystal gathered at the Pauline schoolhouse and put their names down for a rural electrification project, though the line that finally lit the valley came from Idaho Power in 1947.
Curlew Stake dissolved, and the Arbon Ward turns north to Pocatello
When two apostles closed the Curlew Stake at Snowville in February 1940, the Arbon Ward was handed to Pocatello, where it lasted eleven more years before it was discontinued in 1951.
Jerry Baker, Arbon rancher turned Pocatello hotel keeper, dies at the Carlyle
Jerry Baker came from Mendon to ranch at Arbon around 1900, married George Arbon's daughter Mayme in 1918, and died in January 1940 at the Pocatello hotel he and she ran, still holding his valley ranches.
Pocatello flier sows 8,000 acres of range near Arbon from the air
In late 1938 Pocatello pilot Ralph Knapp scattered crested wheatgrass from a low-flying plane over 8,000 acres of rough range between Arbon and Rockland, on land Carl Rudeen leased, and range scientists watched to see whether it would take.