First vehicle out of Arbon after a winter of three-foot snow
Storms buried Arbon Valley in about three feet of snow in early 1916 and cut its new telephone line; in February the paper reported the first vehicle out since winter began.
Articles.
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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A washboard, a mule and a high school: Arbon's literary society takes the stage
Through the stormy winter of 1915–16, neighbors at the north end of Arbon Valley crowded into the Central school on Tuesday nights to recite, read, play music and debate everything from mules to a high school for Arbon.
A Crystal teacher starts something with a hot lunch on Clifton Creek
In 1915 Lola Skartvedt began cooking hot noon lunches with her pupils in a bare shack school on Clifton Creek near Crystal, and the county paper said the idea should spread statewide.
Storm or no storm, Central school children take the stage for Thanksgiving and Christmas
In the stormy late fall of 1915 the pupils of Arbon's Central school gave a Thanksgiving program and a Christmas Eve cantata, and the *Press* printed every part and nearly every child's name.
After years of waiting, Arbon Valley is connected to the world
Arbon Valley formed its own telephone company in 1913 and talked over barbed wire for two years until the long-distance line from American Falls finally reached it in December 1915.
A new road across the reservation, and a county quarrel over the bill
In 1915 Power County hurried a road for Bannock Valley north across the Fort Hall Reservation before allotment could shut the way, then fell to quarreling over who should pay for it.
An Arbon farmer's wheat comes in clean in a smutty year
In the fall of 1915, while smut ran through Arbon Valley wheat, Power County's new agent found none in Henry Shandrew's grain, and that same year a plant taken from a field near Arbon became a wheat immune to bunt.
Dayton family reaches Arbon by wagon, and neighbors stop a fire at Knox Canyon
A family from Dayton, Washington, came into Arbon by wagon after losing horses to poison on the road, in the same week that neighbors plowed fire guards to save 1,500 bushels of sacked grain near Knox Canyon.
Arbon Valley's biggest wheat year brings its first combines
In 1915 Arbon Valley sowed more wheat than ever, cut some of it with its first combines and threshed the rest with short-handed crews through a dry, fire-prone fall.
For the south end in 1915, the road to market ran over the mountain to Malad
Through the summer and fall of 1915 the South Arbon news column followed hogs, grain, machinery and patients over the mountain road to Malad, the town the valley's south end relied on.
For Arbon Valley's sick in 1915, the doctor was a long ride away
Through 1915 Arbon Valley carried its sick and hurt over the mountain to Malad, across the reservation to Pocatello or down to Ogden, until a long-distance telephone line reached the valley in December.
A Mendon schoolteacher comes north to harvest his Summit grain
For more than thirty years the papers followed Peter M. Larsen, a Mendon schoolteacher, as he went back and forth between his Cache Valley home and his ranch at the Summit end of Arbon Valley.
Arbon farmer Frank Phelps freezes to death, and his son leaves school at 14
Frank Phelps, a South Arbon farmer who first turns up in the papers in 1915, froze to death in 1934, and his only son, Bud, quit school at 14 to run the farm.
Pierce and Ella Hardman kept an Arbon Valley dry farm for fifty years
Pierce Hardman of Mendon took up a dry farm in Arbon Valley before he was twenty-one, and he and his wife Ella worked it for half a century, wintering in North Logan in later years.
A windy Fourth at the Central school and a crowded 24th at Pauline
In the summer of 1915 Arbon Valley decorated its graves, held a big Fourth of July picnic at the Central school on July 3 and crowded the Pauline L.D.S. grounds for Pioneer Day.
South Arbon man held at Malad is cleared of a West Virginia murder
Jailed at Malad in 1915 on a forgery charge, L. E. Howell of South Arbon was suspected of an old West Virginia killing until two officers from that state came west and said he looked nothing like their man.
Arbon Valley farmers catch a spring malady and buy cars
A year after frost took most of its wheat, Arbon Valley came down with what one correspondent called a spring malady, and by June 1915 about fifteen cars were running in the valley.
A New York seminary student spends a summer preaching in Arbon Valley
In 1915 Robert W. Sturges, a New York seminary student, spent four months as pastor of the Congregational churches at Arbon and Highland, then wrote about the valley.
Even the mountain ranges are being homesteaded
Through 1915 the *American Falls Press* followed Arbon Valley homesteaders as they filed in Knox Canyon and on the ranges, drilled for water, built houses and sold out.
Two Smith sisters pass through the South Arbon news of 1915
Elmira and Delone Smith, daughters of the Summit homesteader E. G. Smith, turn up again and again in the South Arbon column of 1915, and their obituaries carry the story on for seventy years.
Pauline takes the field in red, and Sunday baseball comes to Arbon Valley
In the spring of 1915 the Pauline nine wore new red suits, bought with help from a dance, as the valley's neighborhood teams met each other on Sunday afternoons.
Logs piled at the mill promise a building year in Arbon
A pile of logs at John Payne's sawmill in the spring of 1915 told Arbon's correspondent a building year was coming, and the paper's columns followed the canyon mills and the new houses through the season.
The winter the herds died, and the years Bannock Valley was cattle range
An old settler's 1915 memory of the winter that froze the Oregon herds opens three decades of glimpses of Bannock Valley as range for cattle and sheep, before wheat took it over.
An Arbon homesteader becomes Power County's first legislator
In 1914 William Allard, a homesteader from Arbon, won the Republican primary and the November election to become the first man Power County sent to the Idaho House.
By way of Brigham, the valley's mail took weeks to reach Crystal
In 1914 a letter from American Falls to Crystal rode 239 miles of rail through Brigham City and Malad, and the valley kept petitioning until a Pocatello route came in 1916.
Arbon homesteader recalls digging through the snow to pitch his tent
In 1914 Ed Hooker told the Pocatello Tribune how he had shoveled down through several feet of snow and ice for a tent site when he came to Arbon Valley, where he homesteaded until 1917.
Kitchen fire leaves a Rattlesnake Creek homesteader living in a tent
In July 1914 the Pocatello Tribune asked readers to help Mrs. Elizabeth Jackson, homesteading on Rattlesnake Creek, whose house had burned with everything in it.
Frost takes the Bannock Valley wheat after a spring of high hopes
A June frost in 1914 cut down the Bannock Valley wheat after the best spring anyone remembered, yet by winter the valley had still shipped its grain by the carload.
Arbon farmers join the Equity and hope for an elevator of their own
Arbon Valley dry farmers joined the Farmers' Society of Equity in 1913, and for four years the cooperative talked of a grain elevator for the valley that the papers never show being built.
Power County goes dry, and the count waits on Arbon
Power County voted to forbid the sale of liquor on May 20, 1914, 698 to 626, with Arbon going dry by three votes and Crystal by two, and the official count held up a week waiting for Arbon's returns.