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.
Weather & hard winters.
Storms, deep snow and cold, drought, floods, and the seasons the valley remembered.
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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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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.
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.
Augusta Kulock, widow of the blizzard, dies after 28 years in Arbon Valley
Sixteen years after a blizzard took her husband within sight of their house west of Pauline, Augusta Kulock died at Pocatello in August 1938 and was buried after a requiem mass.
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.
Fort Hall tells upstream settlers to leave the Indians' Bannock Creek water alone
In the hot, dry summer of 1935, with grain dying on the reservation farms, the Fort Hall agency ordered settlers at the head of Bannock Creek to give back the Indians' share of its water.
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.
Sacks, not bushels: Arbon Valley's wet, weedy wheat harvest of 1922
After a season of spotty fields, daily rains, weeds above the grain and town men who lost their nerve, Arbon Valley's warehouse took in 29,008 sacks of wheat, a figure the paper first printed as bushels.
In the 1922 thaw, Ed Snyder splits the Arbon mail route
When the spring thaw of 1922 left Arbon's roads too rotten for a team, rural carrier Ed Snyder split his route with his stepson, part of more than twenty years the Snyders gave to the valley's mail.
Lost in a blizzard, Frank Kulock dies within sight of home
Coming home from Pauline with the mail on February 11, 1922, Frank Kulock lost his way in a blizzard and froze to death in his own field, where his wife found him three days later.
Snow buries Arbon's harvest, and the valley waits out a long winter
Snow fell on Arbon Valley before the 1920 threshing was done, and through a long winter the Arbon column of the American Falls Press kept track of the stranded grain, the families who left for town, the dances of those who stayed and a spring that kept turning back to snow.
Arbon Valley builds its new road in a summer without rain
In 1919 Arbon Valley's new highway district started grading and graveling the Bannock Creek road, lost two contractors' trucks to fire, and by August was counting on the road work to carry farmers through a drought.
A mountain of Pauline wheat, left in the weather, goes to Herbert Hoover
Sacked wheat bought in the fall of 1917 lay uncovered at a Pauline grain platform into the next summer, and while the nation saved wheat for the war, the Nonpartisan League carried its spoiling to Herbert Hoover.
Arbon Valley families winter away and the spring columns count them home
In the fall of 1917 many Arbon Valley families left their farms for the winter, a few stayed by choice, and in March 1918 the valley columns counted them home.
Through hail and mustard, Arbon Valley's 1917 wheat brings wartime prices
In the first year of America's war, Arbon Valley's dry-farm wheat came through hail, heat and Jim Hill mustard to a thin harvest that sold for as much as $1.95 a bushel.
A June snowdrift and a broken bridge: the roads to town in 1917
In 1917 a deputy sheriff was stranded six hours in a June snowdrift, a mail carrier forded floodwater and a Portneuf bridge broke under a load of Crystal grain.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Skis, surprise parties and barbed-wire telephones in Arbon, 1914
At the end of a snowy winter in 1914, an American Falls store's monthly paper carried the Arbon news, almost certainly from Mrs. E. A. Logan, and the American Falls Press reprinted it.
Lightning misses Charles Orison, and the papers follow his family for eighty years
A near miss by lightning at Summit in 1911 is the first the valley papers say of Charles and Jean Ann Orison, whose family they followed between Arbon Valley and Logan until 1990.
Winter flood drowns three Arbon children and takes the Bannock bridges
A January rainstorm in 1911 drowned three Arbon children and took the bridges on Bannock Creek; that spring Oneida County put new bridges to a bond vote.