Pauline grows up around a store, a log-cabin school and the Meadow Ward
How Pauline got its store, school and post office, and how its Meadow Ward fared under its first bishop, Wilhelm F. Kowallis, from 1911 to his farewell in 1918.
Old newspapers.
Stories retold in 2026 from the newspapers that reported them, with quotations and links to the original pages.
Browse these articles
Routine notices (meeting notices, reminders and classifieds) are left out of this list; find them under Notices.
↗
Crystal, hidden up Rattlesnake Creek, is a valley strangers cannot find
Six years after it was a new settlement wanting a school, Crystal had about 150 families in a basin so well hidden that the American Falls Press said strangers could not find the road in.
Mrs. Logan tells how the squatters took up Bannock Valley
In 1917 Mrs. E. A. Logan wrote down how a handful of squatters settled Bannock Valley in the 1890s, and in 1920 she told it again as a birthday tribute to George Arbon.
A Kansas bride at Arbon, and the sale that took her husband home
Married at Pocatello in the spring of 1915, Ida Featherston likely played the organ for a new Arbon Sunday school, died at her valley home in May 1916 and was sent home to Kansas for burial, and that fall her husband sold out at the valley's first farm auction.
Arbon Valley keeps Pioneer Day with parades, races and dances
From a 1916 parade to the Central school to the opening of Arbon's new hall in 1929, the valley kept every July 24 with programs, races, bucking contests and dances that ran late.
Walt Andersen and Wealthy Gibbons marry at the family reunion in Mendon
Walt Andersen and Wealthy Gibbons of Arbon were married at the Andersen reunion in Mendon in June 1916, and by Christmas her father had taken out a licence to marry Walt's sister Catherine.
Washington settlers throw open their Bull Canyon picnic to the whole county
Seven years after one newspaper mailed to Dayton drew the first Washington homesteaders to Arbon Valley, their settlement held a three-day picnic in Bull Canyon in June 1916 and invited everyone.
John Payne, the mayor of Arbon that no one elected
An American Falls paper made pioneer John Payne the mayor of Arbon in fun, and over the next two years its columns showed a retired Short Line engineer at work as dry farmer, sawmill owner, justice and would-be county commissioner.
Arbon Valley farmers pledge a dollar an acre for a railroad that never came
For eight years Arbon Valley farmers petitioned, met, signed notes at a dollar an acre and backed one railroad scheme after another, and in May 1916 the promoters carried the plan to American Falls, but no line was ever built.
A wreck mars Arbon's first fair, and Allard answers a critic
Arbon's first community fair, held at the Central school on May 10, 1916, had a band, exhibits and speeches until a borrowed car overturned, and a few weeks later William Allard answered an unsigned critic of the day.
Pauline gets its own polling place, and a valley man goes to the county board
In the spring of 1916 the Pauline schoolhouse became a polling place, and that fall two valley men, Gus Brahmstadt and John Noble, ran for the valley's seat on the Power County board.
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.
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.