Oiled at last, the Arbon highway nears its finish
In September 1959 a state engineer said 43 miles of Highway 38 through Arbon Valley were days from done, the biggest piece of a few years in which the valley's roads were oiled one stretch at a time.
Roads, mail & services.
Roads, post offices and mail, telephones and power, stores, mines and businesses, and local government.
Browse these articles
Routine notices (meeting notices, reminders and classifieds) are left out of this list; find them under Notices.
↗
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.
Arbon Valley signs up half its people to watch the sky
In the mid-1950s Arbon kept a Ground Observer Corps post under Mrs. Lee Newport, and a Pocatello recruiter held the valley up as a town where half the people had trained as plane spotters.
Two weeks of frozen fog bow the Arbon Valley power lines
In February 1954 a freezing fog that would not lift coated the wires around Arbon with frost until 12,500-volt lines bowed nearly to the ground and poles snapped.
Arbon Valley votes, 54 to 18, to hand its roads to the county
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.
Power County asks Boise to make the Arbon Valley road a farm-to-market route
In December 1951 Power County delegates asked the state highway commission to put the Arbon Valley road on the federal secondary system, one step in an eight-year campaign for better roads out of the valley.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
Two mountain roads out of Arbon Valley get new lines, 1937–1938
Through 1937 and 1938 the Pocatello papers followed crews moving the Mink Creek road to Arbon Valley onto a new line and blasting rock cuts for the Garden Creek Gap road toward Robin.
Road worker dies after plow pins him near Arbon as drifts close the valley
In the hard February of 1937 a young Fort Hall road worker died after a snowplow pinned him on the Pauline road, while valley people fed starving ducks and the drifts froze too hard for the plows.
A tractor takes Willis Bullock's leg, and a sleigh and a mail truck carry him out
When a road tractor crushed Willis Bullock's leg in snowbound Arbon Valley in February 1936, a county commissioner got him to Pocatello by sleigh and borrowed mail truck, and two years later a jury heard his $50,000 suit.
Government buys 2,000 Arbon Valley acres for the Fort Hall Reservation
In November 1935 a Pocatello paper reported that the United States had paid seven Arbon Valley owners for some 2,000 acres to add to the Fort Hall Reservation, and a day later it protested the lost taxes.
Thieves strip the Crystal farmers' winter garage of its tires
In January 1935 thieves emptied a garage Crystal farmers shared for bad-weather parking, three men were soon under arrest, and a jury at American Falls convicted one of them of burglary that March.
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.
Worn out by wheat, Arbon's road across the reservation waits for repair
From 1934 to 1939 the papers followed the effort to rebuild Arbon Valley's worn-out wheat road across the Fort Hall reservation, from a governor's inspection in 1934 to a senator's request in 1939 for $240,000 for a highway through the valley.
Agents go by sled to Crystal and bring back a still
In February 1933 federal agents went by sled to a ranch on Rattlesnake Creek near Crystal, seized a 50-gallon still and charged five men under the prohibition law.
Arbon farmer arrested for selling iced beer from his car at country dances
In July 1932 prohibition officers arrested George N. Judkins, an Arbon farmer, for selling iced beer from his car at Saturday night dances near the Arbon school.
Pocatello goes to Boise for Arbon's wheat road
In January 1931 Pocatello and Power County men set out for Boise to win federal money for Arbon Valley's wheat road down Bannock Creek, the start of a three-year push that the papers show ending with no money spent.
Arbon Valley wheat growers pick a committee to join the Farm Board
In February 1930 about twenty Arbon Valley wheat growers set out to form a local under Hoover's Federal Farm Board, and several of the same men later sat on the valley's New Deal farm committees.
Jerry Hatch packs the Arbon mail through the winter of 1928–29
When snow closed the reservation road in the winter of 1928–29, carrier Jerry B. Hatch carried the Arbon mail on his back, and a Crystal woman rode the last miles home beside it on a mail horse.
A power line up Arbon Valley worries the telephone company
In spring 1927 crews hauled poles through Arbon Valley mud for a power line from American Falls to Utah, and the telephone men braced for what it would do to their wires.
Derrick falls at the Arbon well, and five men walk away
In 1926 the Gem State well at Arbon drew crowds, blew gas through its plug, was said to carry helium and lost its derrick; by autumn the company was in receivership.
Arbon's former postmistress and mail carrier answer in federal court
In October 1925 the woman who had kept the Arbon post office was arraigned at Pocatello over $419.06 in missing funds, and the man who had carried the valley's mail was fined $100 for turning mail sacks into grain bags and saddle blankets.