Arbon Churches
An original community record. Open the page to view its preserved photograph or document.
Churches & faith.
The valley's churches and wards, their buildings, and the events of their congregations.
Browse these articles
Routine notices (meeting notices, reminders and classifieds) are left out of this list; find them under Notices.
↗
Monte and Cheri Evans Head Church Mission to Africa
onte and Cheri Evans are heading on a two-week Church Mission to Jinja, Africa, and other small villages in the surrounding areas.
A Buist missionary brings home the Arkansas girl he baptized
A Buist homesteader went east as a missionary in 1915, baptized a fifteen-year-old in Arkansas, came back to marry her on Christmas Day 1921, and in time her brother came north to farm at Arbon as well.
Church agrees to pay taxes on its Arbon farm, and the school's worries ease
A 1982 quarrel between Power County and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints over taxes on a 6,742-acre Arbon Valley farm, which had left the Arbon school's future in doubt, ended that December in a compromise under which the church would pay.
Fifty years on, Willard and Mamie Andersen look back to Arbon
A 1981 golden-wedding notice traced the lives of Willard Andersen, a dry-farm boy who became Arbon's bishop, and Mamie Haney, who came west from South Carolina.
Arbon's Latter-day Saints, the branch the papers kept calling a ward
A 1976 missionary farewell at Arbon, and the obituaries of the farmers who led its Latter-day Saint branch, show Utah papers calling the valley's branch a ward long after it had stopped being one.
Two men of 1875, a bishop and a lawmaker, die eight months apart
Joe Arbon, Arbon Valley's first bishop, and William Allard, the first valley man found in the Idaho Legislature, were born ten weeks apart in 1875 and died in Pocatello eight months apart in 1972 and 1973.
Don Jenson, who farmed Arbon Valley from boyhood, dies at 65
Don Jenson came to Arbon Valley as a boy, farmed there until his death in 1968 though he lived in Pocatello from 1940, and served in two Arbon ward bishoprics.
At 90, Joe Arbon remembers the first furrow in Arbon Valley
Days before Joe Arbon turned 90, a Pocatello paper printed his memories of the valley named for his father, from a dirt-floored cabin and a saddle fund to the first church and the dances he played for.
D. J. Bowen, Arbon's first presiding elder, dies at 93
D. J. Bowen, who crossed into Arbon Valley in 1892, kept its first post office and led its first congregation, died in Pocatello on September 24, 1955, at 93.
At 92, Arbon's first presiding elder still makes his ward teaching rounds
In 1954 the papers caught up with D. J. Bowen, 92, who had led Arbon's first congregation, buried a second wife and was still visiting families for his Pocatello ward 75 years after his first calls.
Stake president Twayne Austin dies on the road home from Arbon Valley
Twayne Austin, Pocatello's Continental Oil agent and the stake president over Arbon's congregation, died in November 1952 when his tank truck rolled off Highway 37 as he drove home from the valley.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Arbon Ward marks thirty years, from meetings in the homes to an $11,000 hall
In 1935 the church historian traced how Arbon's Latter-day Saints grew from ten families meeting house to house in 1900 into a ward of 203 with its own bishops and hall.
Ren Evans, Arbon booster, mail carrier and bishop, dies at 65
When Ren Evans of Arbon died in 1934 his obituary ran only a few paragraphs, but the papers had followed him for a quarter century through a road campaign, a judgeship he never took up, a snowbound mail route, oil stock and a cheese factory.
A Relief Society social at Crystal, and the women who led the valley's societies
A 1918 notice of a Relief Society social at Crystal opens a trail through six years of valley columns and, decades on, the obituaries that named the women who ran those societies.
An Arbon couple find the Logan Temple burned and marry in Salt Lake City
Eddie Davis and May Mathews of Arbon traveled to Cache Valley in December 1917 to marry in the Logan Temple, arrived the day it caught fire, and took the train to Salt Lake City to marry there.
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.
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.
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.
A kitten, a creek and thirty-three years of Sunday school
From 1913 to 1928 children of Arbon, Pauline and Buist wrote stories for the Sunday School's magazine, while Cora Sorensen of the Summit end spent thirty-three years teaching the youngest class.
A minister sends a hill of wheat and a report from Bannock Valley
In the summer of 1913 a Congregational minister mailed a hill of dry-farmed wheat from Arbon with a report on the valley's crops, land and people, while he set about starting its first two Protestant churches.
From Arbon, B. W. Rice counts the grain and the farmers who grow it
Writing from Arbon the day after a divided Fourth of July in 1913, B. W. Rice sized up the valley's grain and named its farmers one by one, and within days two Congregational churches were organized there.
An Arbon rancher writes home from his mission and comes back to a dance
In the spring of 1912 the *Pocatello Tribune* followed Arbon rancher John C. Cairns from Dublin to Halifax and home again, where the valley met him with a supper and dance.
From Rocky Ridge, a church historian looks down on the new settlement of Arbon
In the summer of 1906 the church historian Andrew Jenson drove into Bannock Valley, heard how Arbon began and wrote home that its farms looked like a checker board from the top of Rocky Ridge.
Brigham Young's company crosses Bannock Valley on the road to Fort Limhi
In the spring of 1857 Brigham Young's company came down a steep spur ridge into Bannock Valley on its way to Fort Limhi, and two accounts of the journey give the earliest printed picture of the valley yet found.