Pauline's beginnings and Bishop Kowallis's Meadow Ward, 1910–1918
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.
From the Old Papers
Stories of Arbon Valley retold from the newspapers that reported them: the American Falls Press and other papers of the homestead years, and later ones. Each quotes the paper and links to the original page.
Browse the original records
Community blog · 2010–2020 · original publication order · stories from the old papers added since 2026
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Crystal, the hidden settlement up Rattlesnake Creek, 1911–1917
In 1911 Crystal was a new settlement wanting a school; by 1917 the American Falls Press found about 150 families in a basin so well hidden that strangers could not find the road in.
The squatters of 1892, in Mrs. Logan's words
Mrs. E. A. Logan's 1917 history tells how the first squatters took up Bannock Valley in the 1890s; in 1920 she retold it as a birthday tribute to George Arbon.
Ida Featherston, a Kansas bride at Arbon, 1915–1916
Married at Pocatello in 1915, Ida Featherston died at Arbon in May 1916 and was sent home to Kansas for burial; that fall her husband sold out at the valley's first farm auction.
Pioneer Day in Arbon Valley, 1916–1929
From the 1916 parade to the Central school to Arbon's new hall in 1929, the papers followed the valley's Pioneer Day: programs, races, bucking contests and dances.
Two weddings join the Andersen and Gibbons families, 1916
In June 1916 Walt Andersen married Wealthy Gibbons at the Andersen reunion in Mendon, and that December her father, John Gibbons, married Walt's sister Catherine.
The Washington people's three-day picnic in Bull Canyon, 1916
Settlers from Dayton and other Washington towns came to Arbon Valley from 1909; in June 1916 they held a three-day picnic in Bull Canyon and invited everyone.
John Payne, Arbon's unofficial mayor, 1915–1917
In 1915 the American Falls Press jokingly called pioneer John Payne the mayor of Arbon; its notes show an old railroad engineer turned dry farmer, justice and county candidate.
The railroad that never came to Arbon Valley, 1914–1922
From 1914 to 1922 Arbon Valley farmers petitioned the Short Line, pledged a dollar an acre and backed one railroad plan after another, but no line was ever built.
Arbon's first community fair, and William Allard's letter, 1916
Arbon's first community fair, at the Central school on May 10, 1916, brought exhibits, speeches and a car wreck, and then William Allard's letter defending it.
Pauline gets a polling place: the valley votes in 1916
In 1916 Pauline became a voting precinct of its own, and two valley men, Gus Brahmstadt and John Noble, ran for the valley's seat on the Power County board.
Three feet of snow at Arbon: the winter of 1915–16
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.
Debates and a suffrage tableau: Arbon's literary society, 1915–16
Through the stormy winter of 1915–16 Arbon's Central School Literary Society met on Tuesday nights for recitations, a literary paper and debates, one of them on a high school for Arbon.
Hot lunches at the Clifton Creek school, 1915–1916
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.
Thanksgiving and Christmas at Arbon's Central school, 1915
In the stormy late fall of 1915 the *Press* printed the Central school's Thanksgiving and Christmas Eve programs, naming the Arbon children who recited, sang and acted in them.
The long wait for Arbon's telephone line, 1913–1915
Arbon Valley organized its own telephone company in 1913 and talked over barbed wire while it waited for the long-distance line from American Falls, which arrived in December 1915.
The Arbon road controversy: a road across the reservation, 1915
In 1915 Power County paid to build its stretch of the valley's road north across the Fort Hall Reservation before allotment could close the way, and the bill set off a county quarrel.
Henry Shandrew's clean wheat in a smutty year, 1915
In 1915 Power County's new agent found no smut in Henry Shandrew's Arbon wheat while smut spread through the valley, and a plant from a field near Arbon became a bunt-immune wheat.
Overland from Dayton and a fire at Knox Canyon, October 1915
A family from Dayton, Washington, reached Arbon by wagon with their stock after losing horses on the road; the same column told of a stubble fire stopped near 1,500 bushels of grain.
Two solid townships of wheat: Arbon Valley's crop of 1915
Late spring rains, the valley's first combines, short-handed crews and dry-season fires: the American Falls Press followed Arbon Valley's wheat harvest of 1915.
Over the mountain to Malad: the valley's south end in 1915
In 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.
The long road to the doctor: Arbon Valley's sick and hurt in 1915
In 1915 Arbon Valley's sick and injured were carried to doctors at Malad, Pocatello and Ogden, or a doctor was sent for; in December the long-distance telephone arrived.
Peter M. Larsen: summers at Summit, winters in Mendon
For decades the papers followed Peter M. Larsen, a Mendon schoolteacher, between his Cache Valley home and the family ranch at the Summit end of Arbon Valley.
Frank Phelps of Arbon, Who Froze to Death in 1934
Frank Phelps, an Arbon Valley farmer in the papers from 1915, froze to death in 1934, and his son Bud, then 14, left school to run the family farm.
Pierce and Ella Hardman, fifty years on an Arbon Valley homestead
From 1911 the papers followed Pierce Hardman of Mendon to his Arbon Valley homestead, which he and his wife Ella farmed for half a century, later wintering in North Logan.
The Fourth at the Central school and the 24th at Pauline, 1915
In 1915 Arbon Valley decorated graves on Decoration Day, held its Fourth of July picnic at the Central school on July 3, and kept Pioneer Day at the Pauline L.D.S. grounds.
Jailed at Malad and taken for a West Virginia fugitive, 1915
In 1915 Oneida County officers jailed L. E. Howell of South Arbon at Malad on a forgery charge; suspected of an old West Virginia murder, he was soon cleared of it.
A spring malady: Arbon Valley farmers buy cars, 1915
In 1915, a year after frost took most of the valley's wheat, Arbon farmers began buying cars; by June the South Arbon column counted about fifteen in the valley.
A seminary student's summer in Arbon Valley, 1915
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.
Homesteads on the mountain ranges: Arbon Valley in 1915
In 1915 the *American Falls Press* recorded Arbon Valley homesteaders filing in Knox Canyon and on the ranges, drilling wells, building houses and selling out.