Finding the valley
About 1893 or the time of the so-called Cleveland Depression, the store [his father Andrew Andersen's, in Mendon] burned down with everything in it destroyed […]
It was at this time that he and Michael Murphy went looking for some land to homestead. They went through Pocatello Valley but there was only one small spring of water in the whole valley and Mr. Murphy had already filed on this land. They then went on through Curlew Valley and then to Bannock Valley where they found a large meadow with water close to the surface and that is where Father staked a claim. This ground had never been surveyed but was used for grazing by large cattle companies and thousands of sheep were herded along the foothills every spring on their way to summer range. After the land was surveyed all of Father's family homesteaded there.
I went on my first trip out of Cache Valley with my brother John on our way to Bannock Valley when I was seven years old. He had to hold me from jumping off the wagon when we went down the dugway at Bear River. I was afraid to go downhill and I have never got over it to this day. We made it to Murphy's ranch in Pocatello Valley the first day and then on to Bannock Valley the next day. We did not see anyone all day, just open country and today I think every foot of this ground is farmed.
Our family was not the first settlers in Bannock Valley. Other families had moved in; mostly from Samaria in Malad Valley. They settled on the west side of the valley and built a small canal to bring the water from Knox Canyon to their farms. People did not believe that wheat would grow if it wasn't irrigated, consequently, about all that was grown was alfalfa to feed their stock. There were a very few settlers came to the valley for a number of years. Hundreds of cattle and horses grazed the country until 1907 and by 1910 the entire valley was homesteaded. Our folks fenced about 320 acres and cleared the sagebrush and plowed quite a large part and planted grain. Some years they had good crops. The first wheat they raised, they did not get threshed until the next spring on account they could not get a machine in time before it snowed and the threshing machine crew pulled out and went back to Samaria until the next spring.
Herding on the ranch
We raised some horses and quite a large number of cattle. We had not been able to raise enough hay to feed them through the winter so we had to drive them back to Utah to feed them in the fall and then back to the ranch in the spring. Somehow, I went along every spring. Then they got into the sheep business and I fell into a steady job from early spring until fall. When I went to school my brothers would change off several times during the summer but I was a permanent fixture all summer, and as I look back at the things I did for the short time we had sheep, it seems like I was alone a good part of the time. Sometimes I didn't see anyone for as long as two weeks. The sheep used to feed at night and when it would get warm in the daytime they would stay in the shade. I had a real good saddle horse and a burro to carry my bed and gear. We had to stay with the sheep at night to protect them from wild animals, but in the daytime I would ride my pony up to the different mountain peaks or to look for a good place for the sheep to graze. I always got back to the sheep before they started to move in the evening. Whenever I go through that country now either in a car or by plane, I see the mountains and valleys where I spent my younger days. I remember the long lonesome days and nights I spent there with the thought that maybe I helped accomplish something for someone. I know I learned to look after myself then and the experiences I had in those years I have used for my benefit in my latter years. […] I spent the summers at the ranch looking after the horses and cattle while the other boys were shearing sheep and I worked one season at the shearing corral when it was located on Dairy Creek, just over the mountain from the ranch. There was about 45 shearers and used to shear as many as 5,000 sheep in one day. While I was staying on the ranch most all the time alone I broke horses to ride. Most of the time it was bareback as I didn't have a saddle so I used to get thrown off many times, but I never was seriously injured.
It was hard to find a job in those days as there was no industries of any kind except farming and ranching. Farmers were mostly young people just starting out on their homesteads and we used to help each other especially at harvest time.
A homestead of his own, 1907
I homesteaded 160 acres of ground near my brothers. This was early in the year of 1907. I started to clear the sagebrush off from a part of the land and fenced part of it, but I had no equipment to farm with so I went back to Mendon and helped my father on his farm and intended to try and find some kind of a job. […]
I returned to the ranch in Bannock Valley and told my brothers that I intended to go on a mission. After talking to them, we thought it would not be right to try and make any more improvements on my homestead as there were a great number of people coming in from Washington and other places looking for land to homestead. As I would be unable to live on my place for the next two and a half years or longer in order to comply with the homestead law, someone else would contest my right to this land because I was not living on the land. I had already accepted my mission call so there was nothing I could do but hope it would still be there when I returned.
Back to the valley, 1910
I was anxious to get out to my homestead in Bannock Valley to see if anything had happened while I was away, after staying home for about two weeks my Brother Walt and I drove the horses that they had brought to Mendon for the winter. We were two and a half days on the road and we left the horses on the mountain east of the Valley and went on down to the ranch with our saddle horses. The snow still covered most of the Valley so there wasn't much activity, only where people were feeding stock. We stayed at my brother Magnus' place, he had not stayed in his cabin all winter but it was fairly stocked with food and bedding so we were able to get by until we could make better arrangements. I found nothing had happened to the place I had filed on only my sister Catharine had filed on the land adjoining mine and as all the land surrounding ours had been taken up and was fenced my brother just had to fence 1/2 mile on the west end and 1/2 mile on the east end of our homesteads. This had been done while I was away. Catharine had a shanty built on her place but nothing was done on mine until now. I secured a tent and put it up, borrowed a single cot and a small cook stove and slept there until I could get material to build something more substantial, but that took longer than I expected. I didn't have any money or anything to work with but my brother Ezra and his wife gave me some material and a few logs and some lumber and hauled it over to my place so it made it look like I was going to start building and intended to stay there and I felt real good that no one had tried to get the place away from me while I was serving on my mission. I could hardly believe that so many people had moved in and settled in the Valley since I was there the last time. Every piece of land that could be farmed was settled on while I was away and most everyone was working their ground. They had come from as far away as eastern Washington and some from Cache Valley in Utah. As spring finally came, the valley became alive with people. It seemed everyone but myself had horses and equipment to develop the ground and build houses and out buildings. There wasn't anything I could do until I could get some horses and equipment to work with. I went over to Dairy Creek to the sheep shearing corral and obtained a job putting the sheep into the shearers pens and letting them out after they were sheared, and going to the canyon and cutting firewood for the steam engine at the shearing plant. I worked there until the shearing was finished, came back to my homestead for a few days and then returned to Mendon to see my folks and especially to see my sweetheart.
I went back to our homestead and to try and get hold of something so we could live there after we were married. It was too late in the season to do any plowing as the ground was too dry and hard so I made a deal with my brothers to take care of their horses while the breeding season started. They had two stallions and a Jack and I was real busy with them for a while and at the same time I was able to stay on my place. In return for working for them I received one horse from my brother Otto, and the promise of a team from Catharine and Magnus. I had kept one colt that I was unable to sell before I went on a mission, so I was glad of that. I broke the mare that I had kept and the one Otto let me have so I was quite encouraged when I returned to Mendon in the late summer. […] We were married in the Logan temple for time and eternity on the 26th of October, 1910.
Father gave us a wagon and we borrowed a harness from Beth's father and with our team (not a very good one) we made it to Malad and we stayed with John and Dora Larsen (Beth's sister) the first day and we slept in the covered wagon that night. The next day we were on our way to Bannock Valley and the place where we intended to build our home.
We arrived early in the evening and my brother Magnus who was living alone, invited us to stay with him. He was expecting to return to Mendon for the winter. We were glad to have a place to stay while we worked on our place. Ezra gave us some more material to help build the house, but not enough, so we went to Bull Canyon to get the balance of the logs we needed to start the house. We located some timber quite close to a small saw mill. We camped near the mill and for about a week we cut enough logs and had them sawed on two sides to match the ones we had on the place and loaded the shorter ones on the wagon and went back to our place.
The next few days I spent bringing the logs from the mill. I could make the trip to the mill and back in a day, so Beth didn't go with me while I was hauling the logs. My Uncle John (father's brother) came to return the stallion I had delivered to him three years before in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. He stayed with us for about ten days. He was an expert in building with logs and he and my brother John and with the help of Ezra, we had the logs all laid and the lumber and rafters put on ready for the shingles. We made a trip to Malad, obtained enough shingles, windows, and doors to finish the house and succeeded in getting the roof finished and the windows and doors in place. We needed to chink between the logs and flooring and ceiling lumber, also plaster material to build a chimney and fill between the logs. We had to make another trip to Malad City to obtain this material, but before we could do this winter set in and realizing we could not finish the house that year, we left for Mendon and the house we had rented from Uncle John. It rained and snowed on us all the way to Mendon and we were real glad to get back. This was the early part of December, and we were anxious to get settled for the winter.
The flood of 1911
[…] We had a severe storm, rain and wind and flood from the mountains. Otto's house was nearly flooded and his family came over to our place and stayed until the storm was over. It was at this time that my brother's boy was drowned in Bannock Valley. Their family with their son Nicholas, and three other children (Del Dalton's) that were riding in the same sleigh were drowned. My brother, Magnus, and myself tried to go out to Bannock to be with them. We went on horseback but when we arrived at Bear River the bridge was washed out and it was still raining, so we turned back and did not get to Bannock until spring.
Settling in, 1911–1913
We made arrangements with Catherine to use one of her horses so when spring came we loaded our belongings in the wagon and started for Bannock Valley. We stayed in Fielding with Beth's cousin, Sylvia Hess, the first night and the next day we made it to Malad City and stayed with Aunt Dora and Uncle John Larsen and then continued on our way the next day. We made good time until we reached the top of the mountain, and for about two miles we had to shovel deep snow in some places, but finally made it to Uncle Magnus' cabin and stayed there until we had our house near enough finished to move into. We made the house liveable in a short time and settled down to make a home. Spring came late that year, it rained and snowed but as soon as the ground was dry enough to plow, I borrowed a hand plow and started to break the ground. Our land was one mile long and one quarter mile wide.
[…] We made arrangements to have a well drilled and I gave the horse that Otto had given me to pay for the drilling of the well.
I was able during the summer and fall, to get enough work helping others so we could buy our necessities and to completely finish the house, besides building a stable for our horses, we went to the canyons and brought home enough wood to keep us warm for the coming winter. My brother's wife, Sena, was expecting a baby during the winter and his family moved out late in the fall and Beth and I took care of their livestock all winter. There was a lot of snow during the winter, it was deep enough to cover all the barbed wire on the fence and some places the top of a fence post would stick out of the snow. We went every day to feed the stock and see that they were taken care of. It was just a little over a half mile from our place and we went back and forth on snowshoes.
It was impossible to follow the roads and it was nearly a half mile to Ezra's place but we saw each other nearly every day and we got together about once a week. Besides my folks and the Arnn family and Heber Woods were about all we saw all during the winter. When anyone came to visit us or we went to visit them, we would stay all night, visit or play cards, have something to eat and return home next morning. We kept well all winter and as I look back now I'm sure we enjoyed the winter and we did appreciate our friends and neighbors at Christmas time. John Larsen and all their family came and spent a week with us. When they started for home, we helped them over the mountain and that was the last time we saw anyone from out the Valley until the snow melted. When spring finally came we got busy, finished plowing the twenty acres we started the last year and planted it with barley and then started to clear and plow some more ground. I had borrowed a horse from Ezra and with one of our own and the other one of Catharine's we were doing real good. I might mention that we had to make eight rounds with the plow in a day in order to plow two acres. It would take one hour to go one round so we worked eight hours and I walked sixteen miles in order to plow two acres. While I plowed, Beth would pull some of the larger sage brush but we didn't get very far, only about another twenty acres and we ran into more disappointment. Catharine had married and when her and her husband came to live on the place, they needed her horse and harness and came and took them which left us stranded again. Again Ezra and his wife came to our rescue. They let us have some horses and went with me to Malad, where I purchased harnesses and a riding plow and he intended to go sheep shearing so I had the use of his horses all spring or until the ground was too dry and hard to plow. All together we had over eighty acres plowed and the sagebrush cleared off and during the summer I harrowed and prepared it for fall planting. […]
The barley we had planted made a fairly good crop and I made arrangements to trade the barley for seed wheat. As soon as I could leave after George L. was born, I returned to the farm and planted the ground that was ready. […]
My sister, Anna, and her husband had settled just a mile from our place. She was a nurse and they were staying through the winter so we felt quite secure and they were ready and willing to help if we needed them. We received supply of everything we needed including hay for the horses from Ed Davis. He was running a grocery store at his home. Then it was only four miles to the store. I had purchased three hogs from Mr. Guthrie. We butchered two and kept one for a brood sow and we had obtained a real good cow. We had plenty of milk and butter and a real comfortable home. The winter passed about the same as before only there wasn't so much snow so we could get around easier and did not spend so much time alone.
I had traded my old plow to John Larsen for a rifle and an old horse. Now I had one more horse than I needed so I traded the new horse to Henry Shandrew for a mare that was about ready to have a colt and she wasn't able to stand the hard work he had for her. We kept the mare only a few days before her colt was born, then Mr. Shandrew offered to plow twenty acres of land if I would give him the mare and colt back. He did that and before the ground got dry, I had the whole one hundred and sixty acres under cultivation and we were real pleased with what we had accomplished. We spent the summer cleaning the sagebrush and preparing the ground for planting. When harvest time came, Ezra and I purchased a header and cut and stacked the grain and that fall all the Andersen boys purchased a horse-drawn power threshing machine so we could do our own threshing. Our crops were not too good but we harvested enough to pay some of our bills and seed the ground we had ready. We hauled the grain either to Michaud or Malad. Either way it took three days for one trip and there were no houses or place to eat at Michaud so we had to take feed for the horses, bedding and food for ourselves and sometimes it was below zero when we made these trips. There was no mountains to cross when we went to Michaud so it was easier on the team, but not any nearer than Malad.
The frost, 1914, and the dry year, 1915
Some things I remember and think of often even though they happened over fifty years ago. One especially was when I was preparing the ground to plant in the summer. I used to take George L. with me. I would put a wooden box on the harrow, put him in it and take him for a two mile ride around the farm, he would go to sleep and get covered with dust so his mother would have to give him a bath and wash all his clothes. He used to cry when I didn't take him but it was too dusty for him and also very dangerous, although I always walked within a few feet of him and Beth used to stand by the house and watch while I made the round.
Winter came and although the snow wasn't so deep and the roads were open nearly all the time, we were glad when spring arrived. Our routine of life was about the same as it had been in the winter before but our hopes were high because our entire farm was planted with wheat and the ground had been well prepared and we had never figured that there would be a crop failure. There wasn't much work to do on our place so I made a deal to plow some of Catharine's land. I was to get all the first crop for breaking and clearing the brush off and then pay her for a third of the crop. Each year that I farmed her ground I plowed eighty acres and prepared it for planting and then started to build a granary and a barn. I had enough lumber for the granary. Our grain on the field was a perfect stand and headed out. In the evening when the wind blew, we could see it waving all over the field. We were so happy thinking now we would have a real harvest and begin to accomplish something.
We walked out in the field in the evening of the thirteenth of June. The wheat was thick and stood nearly up to our waist with not a weed in sight. A north wind came up during the night and it was quite cloudy and cold. We were afraid that if the wind stopped blowing it might freeze. When we went out in the morning of the fourteenth of June, the wind had stopped and our grain was frozen; so bad that when we walked through the field the grain would break off clear to the ground. We knew that our crop was completely destroyed and as we stood in the door and wondered why, we were heartbroken and when Beth saw the tears of disappointment in my eyes, she put her arms around me and said, "Never mind. We will try again next year." I never really knew what faith and courage and love could do and I loved her more than ever. She had suffered so many disappointments and if it hadn't been for her love I think we would have just pulled out and left the whole thing. But we stayed and tried again only we didn't do much better the next year, but we just couldn't quit. So we worked the whole field again and borrowed money to buy seed and planted it over again along with the ground I had prepared on Catharine's place. We had to do something in order to live. We moved out again and I got a job working a few days at a time but it was enough to live on.
The next spring we returned to the ranch and the grain we had planted looked pretty good so our hopes rose along with our prospect for a good crop. We finished building the granary and waited to see what would happen. Everything looked good for awhile but they hadn't been much snow and hardly any rain in the growing season. Most of the grain did not mature on account of the drought, but we did raise enough to get by on. When I saw what had happened I plowed about half of it up and prepared the land for planting in the fall. Most of the grain we harvested was from Catharine's land and it turned out to be real smutty so we had to take less for it on the market. After harvest was over and planting finished, we prepared to move to Mendon, not only to try and find some work […]
Leaving the farm, 1916–1918
I subscribed to the course and also went back to Bannock Valley and summer fallowed eighty acres of land on the farm, worked at the [Dairy Creek] Shearing corrals as long as the job lasted. […]
[…] Walt was taking care of our farm in Bannock and we made more out of the farm than we had ever made before.
[…] We turned our farm over to Walt and purchased twenty acres of irrigated land with a two room house and stable on it just south of the elevator. […]
[…] We finally sold our ranch in Bannock Valley and finished paying for our place in Malad. […]
From the life story of George Lionel Andersen (1887–1981). Shared by the Andersen family, October 2026. Read the full life story on FamilySearch ↗ · Back to his family history page