Red suits and Sunday ball: Arbon Valley baseball, 1915
In 1915 Pauline, Central, Crystal and the "Daytonites" of South Arbon played Sunday baseball, and Pauline took the field in red suits paid for with the help of a dance.
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.
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Community blog · 2010–2020 · original publication order · stories from the old papers added since 2026
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Horses and the first tractors in Arbon Valley, 1916–1922
From a 10-20 tractor plowing 350 acres in 1916 to a Fordson on a 1921 sale bill, the papers show the first tractors at work beside Arbon Valley's big horse teams.
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.
Lila Wade of Horse Island, teacher in Arbon's one-room schools
In 1925 Lila M. Wade of Horse Island took charge of District 12's Arbon school, next door to the oil well; her 1994 obituary remembered her years in Arbon's one-room schools.
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.
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.
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.
The Pauline wheat pile and the Nonpartisan League, 1917–1918
Wheat bought in 1917 sat in an open pile at a Pauline grain platform into 1918, and the Nonpartisan League took its spoiling to Herbert Hoover.
Old Jim Hill: Arbon Valley's war on a rolling weed, 1917–1918
In 1917 and 1918 Arbon Valley's wheat farmers fought Jim Hill mustard, a rolling tumbleweed, and the Press's roving farm writer let the weed tell its own side.
Pauline City: the crossroads that hoped to be a town, 1917–1924
In 1917 Pauline hoped a doctor's office and drug store would be "the beginning of the city of Pauline"; the papers follow that hope to a school yell of 1923.
Sophia Andersen of Mendon, mother of the Arbon Andersens
Sophia Andersen of Mendon, Utah, never homesteaded in Arbon Valley, but the papers of 1929–1939 show her Arbon children and grandchildren coming home to her house.
Before the draft: Arbon Valley's volunteers of 1917
In 1917, before the draft reached them, young men of Arbon and Crystal enlisted at Pocatello, Salt Lake City and Portland, and the papers named them one by one.
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.
The Logan Temple fire and an Arbon wedding, December 1917
Eddie Davis and May Mathews of Arbon came to Cache Valley to marry in the Logan Temple in December 1917, found it burned, and married in Salt Lake City instead.
Turkey Red at $1.81: Arbon Valley's wartime wheat of 1917
In 1917, the year America went to war, Arbon Valley's dry-farm wheat came through hail, heat and mustard to a thin harvest that sold at wartime prices of up to $1.95 a bushel.
Arbon Valley's Red Cross in the First World War, 1917–1919
The women of Arbon and Crystal formed Red Cross societies in 1917 and, with Pauline, sewed and knitted for soldiers; in 1919 the Red Cross gave a welcome-home ball at Crystal.
An aeroplane in the night sky over Arbon, 1917
In September 1917 the Arbon column of the American Falls Press reported that neighbors had seen an aeroplane fly over the valley one night, twelve years before the first airplane on record there.
Hy Secrist and the wheat thieves at Pauline, 1917
In November 1917 a Pauline wheat buyer followed a stolen load by lantern, and Deputy Sheriff Hy Secrist waited for the thieves behind a telephone pole.
Wintering out: Arbon Valley families leave and come home, 1917–18
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.
Bugle calls at midnight: the valley sends off its draft men, 1917
In the fall of 1917 Arbon and Crystal held farewell dances for the first valley men called in the draft, and the American Falls Press followed them to Camp Lewis.
The Pilgrim on foot: a roving writer in Arbon Valley, 1917
In the fall of 1917 the American Falls Press's roving farm writer, the Pilgrim, walked the roads of Crystal, Pauline and Arbon and wrote down what he met along the way.
Poison day in Arbon Valley: the war on ground squirrels, 1918–1921
How Arbon Valley's farmers joined Power County's strychnine campaign against ground squirrels, set a poison day in 1920, and lost horses to the bait.
From the Bailey place to the auction: the McLarrys, 1918–1922
Lucien McLarry of Dayton, Washington, moved onto the Parley Bailey place at Arbon in 1918; in 1920 his horses and combine went to auction, and by 1922 the Bailey land was in court.
The women who led Arbon Valley's Relief Societies
The papers caught the valley's Relief Societies at their meetings, socials and dances, and obituaries printed decades later name the women who had led them.
B. O. Kelley and the Bannock Creek bridge at Pauline, 1918
Early on December 23, 1918, B. O. Kelley, hauling Pauline wheat for the Zaring Grain Company, drove his truck off the Bannock Creek bridge at Pauline and was killed.