The Hayden family came into the Arbon Valley rather later than the rest of the valley, getting title to their homestead lands in the Crystal area in 1918 (meaning they filed on homesteading land around 1913). They made an impact on the valley and the third and fourth generation are still farming in the Crystal area. One Hayden family actually lives in the original Crystal store and post office, while the Crystal school stands in the Hayden stack yard, with the well-used chalkboard still attached to the wall.
FAMILY HISTORY · CRYSTAL AREA
Hayden
From Pocatello, Idaho, by way of Sweden · earlier Sweden
A Swedish immigrant carpenter, John Hayden (born Johan August Bengtsson), took one of the last Crystal homesteads in 1913. His brother Martin’s wife Margary kept the Crystal post office in her home for thirteen years (1923–37), his son Norman sat in the state senate for Power County (1937–38), and the family grew the 160-acre homestead into more than 2,500 acres (family account). The family says a Hayden home is the renovated Crystal store and post office; the old Crystal school stands in their stack yard.
- Arrived
- 1913 (entry about July 1913; patent March 1919) year known
- Homesteads and land
- 4 places on the map below ↓
- People recorded
- 15 across 3 generations ↓
From the family history
The account first written for this family on ArbonValley.com, kept in full. The chapters after it add what the records and the other family histories tell.
1 minute read
About this account · first posted August 29, 2019
Written for the original ArbonValley.com by Melinda Campbell. Memories and documents quoted in the account belong to the people who wrote them. This is the website publication date, not the date of every event described. References to “today” belong to the original account.
Editorial introductions and navigation were added in September 2026. Original citations remain in the account. How we preserve and annotate the history ↗
Their story
John Hayden was born Johann Augustus Bengtson and took a new name on arriving in America; naturalized in 1896, he became a Union Pacific carpenter foreman in Pocatello, where he married Dora Torgersen, a section-gang cook. After some years back in Sweden (three by one family history, six by another; the censuses put the boys’ return in 1909 or 1911) the family returned, and in 1913, homesick for farming, John filed on one of the last Crystal homesteads — the land-office serial dates the entry to about July. The patent was signed in March 1919.
His brother Martin homesteaded a mile and a half to the north-east (patent 1919) and ranched at Crystal until his death in 1949, and his brother Carl lived there in the 1930s; the brothers built several homes in the area. Son Ben, a Navy veteran of the USS Idaho, took over after his brother Norman’s death in 1950, and Ben’s sons Hans and Twain farmed the old homestead and much more.
The children rode a horse to the one-room school in Crystal, then boarded in Pocatello for high school. Crystal held dances “on a very regular basis” in the 1930s, and Walter Hayden farmed a place of his own until the Second World War. John’s nephews Anton and Oscar Jensen farmed just north of Crystal, where the Bengtson-Hayden families gathered for a photograph about 1934–38.
In December 1923, when nobody else wanted the Crystal post office, Martin’s wife Margary (Howells) Hayden took the mail into her home; she was postmaster from 1924 until her death in February 1937, the longest term in the office’s history. Walter’s wife Delsa (Fannin) Hayden followed her and was the last postmaster named before the office closed in August 1938.
John Hayden was a Crystal school trustee (1916) and sat on the District 14 board through the early 1920s; the county agent used his field peas as a demonstration crop, and from 1925 into the late 1930s his ranch was Crystal’s station for the county’s rodent bait. His eldest son Norman led Crystal’s committees in the New Deal farm programmes (1933–38) and was elected Power County’s state senator for the 1937–38 legislature. John’s third son, Carl E. Hayden, became the Salt Lake Tribune’s roving correspondent and wrote the best-known portraits of Crystal’s decline (1956, 1963).
Sources: Hayden · John Hayden & Dora Ingeborg Torgersen · Crystal (area history) · The Ben Hayden Family (FamilySearch document) · Walter Hayden (FamilySearch story) · Russell Jack Hayden, Find a Grave memorial 173653090 · FamilySearch Family Tree — public person summaries · John and Dora Hayden (FamilySearch document)
Where they came from
- Sätila, Älvsborg, Swedenemigrated about 1889–91
- Omaha, Nebraska (naturalized 1896)1890s
- Rock Springs and Superior, Wyoming (coal mines)
- Pocatello (Oregon Short Line carpenter foreman; married 1903)by about 1900
- Sätila again (family stay)about 1905/06 – 1909 or 1911
- Crystal1913
Sources: John Hayden & Dora Ingeborg Torgersen · 1920 U.S. census, Arbon precinct, Power County, Idaho, ED 224 (Andersen and Pett households, dwellings 18–22) · John and Dora Hayden (FamilySearch document) · Western States Marriage Record Index no. 79457: John A. B. Hayden × Dora E. Torgeson, Pocatello, August 29, 1903
The people
15 people of the Hayden family on the valley map, household by household, and 1 history of their own in the archive. Names open their histories; portraits open in the family album.
The households 3
Each with the people who married in, and their children and grandchildren below, oldest first.
John Hayden
1869–1954
Founder of the Hayden farm
More about John
Union Pacific carpenter foreman who homesteaded a Crystal wheat farm in 1913 (east side of Sec. 5 T9S R34E; patent 1919) and was a Crystal school trustee for many years — chairman of the District 14 board in 1920 and its clerk in 1921–23. The county agent used his field peas as a demonstration crop, and his ranch was Crystal’s station for the county’s rodent bait from 1925 into the late 1930s. His son Norman began buying the farm in 1937, and about 1939 John and Dora moved to a house he built on Richland Avenue in Pocatello (they were still counted at Crystal in April 1940).
Dora Ingeborg Torgersen Hayden 1883–1965
Married 1903
John Norman Hayden 1905–1950
Married Marie Gertrude Krueger Hayden (1937)
Walter Theodor Hayden 1906–1970
Husband of Delsa Fannin (married November 17, 1932)
Carl Eskel Hayden 1909–1992
Emma Elnora Hayden Chapin 1912–2003
Wife of Harry Chapin (married 1929)
Russell Jack Hayden 1925–2016
Carl Levin Bengtson Hayden
1878–1967
Brother of John Hayden; never married
More about Carl
A coal miner and carpenter (“Carl Sr.” in the family) who lived at Crystal in the 1930s and early 1940s — a labourer in 1930, in his brother John’s household in 1940 and registered at Crystal in 1942.
Johan Martin Bengtson Hayden
1881–1949
Brother of John Hayden; husband of Margary Howells (married 1910)
More about Johan
A merchant sailor, coal miner near Kemmerer and Pocatello railroad man (in Pocatello from 1900) who homesteaded at Crystal (patent 1919) and was a Crystal rancher until his death in 1949. His wife Margary kept the Crystal post office in their home from December 1923 until her death in 1937.
Margary Howells Hayden 1887–1937
Married 1910 · probably a daughter of William and Mary Jane Howells of Pocatello
Homesteads and land
4 places the Hayden family took up or held, 1913–1923, placed from the land patents, the entry registers and the family accounts.
1234John Hayden homestead (east side of Sec. 5)
John A. B. Hayden’s 1913 homestead (patent 1919): Lot 1, SE¼NE¼ and E½SE¼ of Sec. 5, a quarter-mile strip down the east side of the section. The farm grew from these 160 acres to more than 2,500.
Martin Hayden homestead
Martin Hayden’s homestead (patent August 19, 1919): S½SE¼ and NE¼SE¼ of Sec. 33 and NW¼SW¼ of Sec. 34, T8S R34E, about a mile and a half north-east of John’s.
Central Crystal: Margary Hayden’s post office (1923–37)
Central Crystal around the Sec. 8/9 line, where the 1938 map puts Crystal and the Crystal school and where Margary Hayden kept the post office in her home (December 1923 – 1937), on Forres Whiting’s former homestead (NW¼ Sec. 9 T9S R34E). The Hayden farm grew from 160 to over 2,500 acres around it; John Hayden’s 1913 homestead is mapped separately, on the east side of Sec. 5.
Margary Hayden’s mother Mary Jane Howells’s tract (cash entry about 1916; patent 1918)
Lot 2 of Sec. 4, T9S R34E, 38.01 acres, the lot directly south of Martin Hayden’s homestead: a cash entry made about 1916 and patented on October 3, 1918, to Mary Jane Howells, probably the mother of Margary (Howells) Hayden, who lived in Pocatello. A cash entry needed no residence, and her son David J. Howells’s family farmed at Crystal about 1920–24.
The land patents
The federal patents that made the homesteads theirs, from the General Land Office records.
65 dates in the family’s history
Every date the valley map shows when you follow the Hayden family, era by era: the most telling of each era first, the rest a click away. Dates keep the sources’ own wording.
Homestead or landFamily historyEventValley firstTragedy
Early Claims
Possessory claims and water rights before the valley opened.
about 1889–1891Family history
John Hayden comes to America
Johan August Bengtsson left Sätila parish in Sweden for the United States, took the surname Hayden, and worked as a coachman and lumber-yard hand in Omaha. Family papers say he came about 1889; the 1920 and 1930 censuses say 1891.
1890s Settlement
Homesteads, the first ditch, and the first winters.
1893 or 1896Family history
Carl Hayden follows his brother
John’s brother Carl Levin Bengtson came to America in 1893 by a passenger list cited in his memorial, or in 1896 by the 1930 census. He mined coal near Kemmerer with John and later worked as a carpenter in Pocatello.
Carl Levin Bengtson Hayden
1896Family history
John becomes a citizen
John Hayden was naturalized in 1896, a year the 1920 census confirms; family papers place it at Omaha on October 5.
1895 or 1899Family history
Martin Hayden comes to America
Another brother, Martin, came over in 1895 by his obituary or in 1899 by the 1930 census. Family history remembers him as a merchant sailor who jumped ship.
Johan Martin Bengtson Hayden
Early 1900s Growth
Schools, churches, stores and post offices in every area.
1900Family history
Coal camps of Wyoming, then Pocatello
In 1900 John and Martin were in Sweetwater County, Wyoming, where the brothers mined coal at Rock Springs and Superior. Martin moved to Pocatello that year, and John became foreman of an Oregon Short Line carpenter crew working out of Pocatello.
John Hayden, Johan Martin Bengtson Hayden
about 1905–06 to 1909 or 1911Family history
Back to Sweden for a few years
John and Dora took their young family back to John’s home parish of Sätila about 1905–06. They returned to Pocatello in 1909 by the 1920 census or in 1911 by the 1930 census, a stay of three to six years.
July 29, 1907Event
Crystal’s first proved-up homestead
Crystal was homesteaded later than the rest of the valley. The Meadows claim — entered by Joseph H. Meadows of Pocatello on October 3, 1902 — was the first to be proved up, commuted to a cash entry on July 29, 1907, after his death in December 1905; the patent went to Melvin Meadows, probably his son, in 1908. John O. Johnston and Henry Kettler, who also entered in October 1902, received patents in February 1910. Of the names listed before 1920, only the Hayden, Bradley, Stewart and Wright families still had homes and farms there when the account was written.
September 30, 1910Event
Crystal post office
Cora F. Snyder was appointed Crystal’s first postmistress on September 30, 1910. It was a special-supply office with no mail route: neighbors took turns fetching mail from Hawkins Basin, twelve miles south-east, and a letter could take two months to arrive from Pocatello, until Pocatello mail began coming three times a week in December 1915. Later postmasters were John O. Johnston (1915), the storekeeper Ezra H. Lindsay (1918), W. C. Snyder (1920), Cora Snyder again (1922), Margary Hayden (1923–37) and Delsa Fannin Hayden (1937–38). The office was discontinued on August 15, 1938, and its mail sent to Arbon.
Margary Howells Hayden
1912Event
Crystal Central School
District 14 built a 28×48-foot frame school for $1,750 — a large sum for homesteaders. Five other schools served the fifty-square-mile Crystal area. The district (in Power County from 1913) sold bonds in 1913 with J. W. Staley as chairman; John Hayden served it as trustee, chairman or clerk from 1916 to 1925. Its out-schools included the Thacker, Moench, Gabbert, Blair and “Davis” schools, and the Crystal Latter-day Saints met in the Central schoolhouse.
Community Development
A new county, roads and phones — and the first departures.
1913 (entry about July; patent March 1919)Event
John Hayden takes one of the last Crystal homesteads
Swedish-born carpenter John Hayden (Johann Augustus Bengtson), homesick for farming after some years back in Sweden, filed on one of the last Crystal homesteads in 1913 — the land-office serial dates the entry to about July — on the east side of Section 5, T9S R34E. Final proof was probably made in 1918 and the patent signed on March 11, 1919. His brother Martin took up a homestead a mile and a half to the north-east (patent 1919), and his brother Carl lived at Crystal in the 1930s; the brothers built several homes in the area.
John Hayden, Dora Ingeborg Torgersen Hayden, Johan Martin Bengtson Hayden
1913 (entry about July; patent March 1919)Homestead or land
John Hayden homestead (east side of Sec. 5)
John A. B. Hayden’s 1913 homestead (patent 1919): Lot 1, SE¼NE¼ and E½SE¼ of Sec. 5, a quarter-mile strip down the east side of the section. The farm grew from these 160 acres to more than 2,500.
John Hayden, Dora Ingeborg Torgersen Hayden, Ben Lynn Hayden
1915 sessionValley first
The first legislator from the valley
William Allard, an Iowa farmer who homesteaded on Knox Canyon Road in 1909, is the first valley resident found in the Idaho Legislature, sitting in the House for Power County in 1915.
John Norman Hayden
1915Homestead or land
Martin Hayden homestead
Martin Hayden’s homestead (patent August 19, 1919): S½SE¼ and NE¼SE¼ of Sec. 33 and NW¼SW¼ of Sec. 34, T8S R34E, about a mile and a half north-east of John’s.
Johan Martin Bengtson Hayden
1916Homestead or land
Margary Hayden’s mother Mary Jane Howells’s tract (cash entry about 1916; patent 1918)
Lot 2 of Sec. 4, T9S R34E, 38.01 acres, the lot directly south of Martin Hayden’s homestead: a cash entry made about 1916 and patented on October 3, 1918, to Mary Jane Howells, probably the mother of Margary (Howells) Hayden, who lived in Pocatello. A cash entry needed no residence, and her son David J. Howells’s family farmed at Crystal about 1920–24.
1929–1941Event
Drought and Depression empty the outlying areas
Wartime prices collapsed and the rains failed, and the outlying settlements’ institutions closed one by one: the Pauline post office (November 1929) and Meadow Ward (December 1929); the Summit Ward (May 1930); Buist School (1931); Mountain View School (1935); the Crystal Ward (1935), after most of its Latter-day Saint families had moved to a ranch near Salmon; the Buist post office (August 1936); the Mount View Ward at Buist (December 1937); the Crystal post office (August 1938); and Highland School in Summit (about 1941).
Show 23 more from these years
1913–1923Tragedy
Smallpox, typhoid and scarlet fever
Before the great influenza, typhoid sent Buist settlers home to Utah and smallpox and scarlet fever closed homes, schools and even the Crystal post office.
Margary Howells Hayden
between February 1914 and September 1915 (about June 1914)Family history
Martin files on his own homestead
Martin entered a homestead in Sections 33–34 of T8S R34E, a mile and a half north-east of John’s; the land-office serial dates the filing to between February 1914 and September 1915. The patent was issued on August 19, 1919.
Johan Martin Bengtson Hayden
August 15, 1915 (claimed priority)Family history
A well at the farmstead
The family’s later claim to the domestic and stock well at the farmstead, in the south-east corner of John’s homestead, gives a priority of August 15, 1915. It was a claim in the 1990s water adjudication, not a 1915 record, but it fits the family’s first years on the land.
October 1915Family history
The Hayden boys at school
The Hayden boys and the Fannin children were on the perfect-attendance list of Miss Ollie Beale’s school in the Crystal area, the earliest record of the family at Crystal.
John Norman Hayden, Walter Theodor Hayden, Carl Eskel Hayden
January 1916Family history
John Hayden, Crystal school trustee
John attended the county school trustees’ meeting as a trustee for Crystal, the first record of his long service on the Crystal school board.
about 1916Family history
Martin moves out from Pocatello
After sixteen years in Pocatello, Martin moved to Crystal about 1916. Margary was there by January 1918, when the Crystal column wrote of her many friends.
Johan Martin Bengtson Hayden, Margary Howells Hayden
September 1916Family history
Prize peas at the county fair
John’s stock peas won first prize for the best peck at the Power County fair.
January 1917Family history
Pea grower for the county agent
John was one of the four Crystal members of the county agent’s farm-bureau advisory council. The agent reported that he had grown a demonstration plot of Kaiser peas on dry land, followed the instructions carefully, and meant to plant his whole crop the next year; he had grown peas in rotation in Sweden.
1917–1918Family history
Dora’s war work
During the First World War Dora knitted socks for soldiers, by the family’s account, and in March 1918 the Crystal column reported her caring for a neighbour’s children.
October 3, 1918 (cash entry about 1916)Family history
A tract for Margary’s mother
Mary Jane Howells of Pocatello, probably Margary Hayden’s mother, received a cash patent for the 38-acre lot directly south of Martin’s homestead. A cash entry needed no residence; her son David’s family farmed at Crystal a few years later.
Margary Howells Hayden
June 1919 and June 1920Family history
Norman and Walter finish the eighth grade
Norman passed the county eighth-grade examination from District 14, the Crystal school, in 1919, and Walter graduated the next year.
John Norman Hayden, Walter Theodor Hayden
January 1920Family history
The 1920 census at Crystal
The census found John, Dora and their four children on their mortgaged farm, with ten-year-old Ralph Staley, probably the former bishop’s son, as a lodger. Martin and Carl were not in the Crystal precinct.
about 1920–1924Family history
Margary’s brother farms at Crystal
David J. Howells, probably Margary’s brother, owned a mortgaged farm at Crystal in 1920, and his children went to the Crystal school. Their mother, Mrs. M. J. Howells of Pocatello, visited at Christmas 1923, and a party at “the Howell house” in March 1924 is the family’s last Crystal item.
Margary Howells Hayden
May 1920Family history
Chairman of the Crystal school board
John was chairman of the District 14 (Crystal) school board in 1920.
about 1920Event
The Kruegers move to upper Rattlesnake Creek
Charles and Hattie Krueger, who had homesteaded on the Robin side of the Bannock Range (patent 1918), moved over to upper Rattlesnake Creek, where they lived until Charles’s death in 1936. Their children went to the Lyons school (District 26); their daughter Marie later taught at Crystal and married Norman Hayden.
Marie Gertrude Krueger Hayden
August 1920Family history
A Nonpartisan League petition
A John Hayden, almost certainly the Crystal man, signed the Nonpartisan League’s petition for a county ticket.
1921–1923Family history
Clerk of the Crystal school district
John was clerk of District 14 in 1921, 1922 and 1923, and in December 1923 he mended the lock and a window of the Central schoolhouse.
1923Homestead or land
Central Crystal: Margary Hayden’s post office (1923–37)
Margary Howells Hayden, Johan Martin Bengtson Hayden
December 1923 – August 1938Event
The Haydens keep the Crystal post office
When nobody else wanted the Crystal post office, Margary Hayden — wife of John Hayden’s brother Martin — took the mail into her home in December 1923; she was appointed postmistress in April 1924 and kept the office until her death on February 25, 1937, Crystal’s longest term. Delsa Fannin Hayden, Walt Hayden’s wife, took charge in April 1937 and kept it until the office closed on August 15, 1938; Walt helped, and Delsa’s sister worked in it in the summer of 1938. The original ArbonValley.com account’s “old store and post office,” a Hayden home today, cannot be the first Snyder store, which burned in 1921.
Walter Theodor Hayden, Johan Martin Bengtson Hayden, Margary Howells Hayden
March 1924Family history
Suppers and parties for the young people
In a winter when Crystal was emptying, the Haydens kept its social life going: a waffle supper for the teachers and young people at “the Hayden home”, an entertainment at Norman’s, and a supper at Martin and Margary’s for the young people of the valley.
John Norman Hayden, Johan Martin Bengtson Hayden, Margary Howells Hayden
about 1925 (to 1944)Event
The Crystal Jensens
Anton Jensen, son of John Hayden’s sister Anna, took up farming just north of Crystal about 1925; he owned his place by 1930, and his brother Oscar lived with their uncle John. The farm appears as “Jensen Ranch” on the 1938 map. Anton left for a machinist’s shop in Pocatello in 1944.
1925Family history
Distributing squirrel bait
In the county’s 1925 ground-squirrel campaign John was one of five community distributors, handing out 3,500 pounds of poisoned bait to Crystal farmers.
October 1925Family history
A winter school for distant children
As third trustee of the Crystal district, with Mrs. G. C. Wright as clerk and Frank Blair as chairman, John helped open a temporary winter school for children living seven miles or more away.
Depression & Change
Drought, closures, tractors, electricity, the reservation boundary.
April 1930Family history
Three Hayden households
The 1930 census listed John’s family with his nephew Oscar Jensen; Martin and Margary, whose occupation was given as rural postmistress; and John’s brother Carl, a single labourer doing odd jobs.
John Hayden, Johan Martin Bengtson Hayden, Margary Howells Hayden, Carl Levin Bengtson Hayden
1930–1942Family history
The Crystal bait station
From 1930 to 1938 the county agent named John Hayden’s ranch as Crystal’s distributing point for poisoned grain against rodents, one of five or six stations in the county. From 1939 the station was Norman’s ranch.
John Hayden, John Norman Hayden
1936–1938Family history
Chairman of the Crystal conservation committee
Norman chaired the Crystal community committee of the Agricultural Conservation Program from 1936 to 1938, and in 1937 he was vice-president of the county association’s board.
John Norman Hayden
spring 1936Family history
Crested wheatgrass on Walt’s farm
The county agent seeded a crested-wheatgrass demonstration plot on Walt Hayden’s farm in his dry-farm rotation trials, and Walt harvested crested wheatgrass in 1938.
Walter Theodor Hayden
about 1936–1971Family history
Carl E. Hayden, Tribune correspondent
John’s son Carl E. Hayden was the Salt Lake Tribune’s correspondent and roving reporter for 35 years, writing Idaho features, and after retiring in 1971 became the “scribe” of Jackpot, Nevada.
Carl Eskel Hayden
1937–1940Family history
Testing and certifying seed wheat
Norman tested Relief wheat for smut resistance, compared Blackhull with Turkey Red, and bought certified Turkey Red seed to raise a county seed source. He grew the county’s only certified Relief and Komar wheat in 1939 and its only certified Turkey Red in 1940.
John Norman Hayden
Show 9 more from these years
1933–1943Event
New Deal farm committees and the grange
From 1933 the county agent’s wheat-allotment committees of the Agricultural Adjustment program were the valley’s main civic bodies: for Arbon (Roy Lindley, J. N. Arbon, John Anderson and Ed Davis; in 1934 J. N. Arbon, J. L. Payne and Frank Phelps), for Pauline (E. C. England, William Allard and M. V. Tallon), for the reservation side (Perry Lusk), for Crystal (Norman Hayden, Chester Smith and Elva Thacker) and, on the Oneida side, for Summit (J. P. Sorensen, J. I. Nunnelley and I. Y. Rush) and Buist (H. S. Bird), with R. H. Willie also serving. The Arbon Valley Grange No. 349 kept records from 1934 to 1939. Chauncey C. Payne became county AAA chairman in 1941 and War Board chairman in 1942; Norman Hayden chaired the Arbon–Crystal planning committee in 1941–42, with Allard as secretary and Waldo Evans among its members.
John Norman Hayden
1937–38 legislature (nominated August 1936)Event
A Crystal farmer in the state senate
Norman Hayden, a Crystal wheat grower and Democrat, won the Power County nomination for state senator in August 1936 by 233 votes to 227 and sat in the Idaho Senate in the 1937–38 legislature — the only Crystal resident found in the legislature.
John Norman Hayden
May 2, 1937Event
Norman Hayden takes on the farm
When Norman Hayden married Marie Krueger, a Crystal schoolteacher, he began buying the farm from his parents; about 1939 John and Dora moved to a house John built in Pocatello.
John Norman Hayden, Marie Gertrude Krueger Hayden, John Hayden, Dora Ingeborg Torgersen Hayden
October 16, 1940Family history
Norman and Walter register for the draft
Norman and Walter registered for the draft at Arbon; Walter gave Sätila, Sweden, as his birthplace and named his wife Delsa as his contact.
John Norman Hayden, Walter Theodor Hayden
February–April 1942Family history
Ben, Carl and Martin register
Ben registered for the draft at Crystal in February 1942. In April John’s brothers Carl and Martin, both living at Crystal, registered in the “old man’s draft” for men over 45.
Ben Lynn Hayden, Carl Levin Bengtson Hayden, Johan Martin Bengtson Hayden
1942Family history
On the Crystal fire crew
Norman served on the Crystal farm fire crew led by Eli Wolverton, with Herman Krueger as assistant leader.
John Norman Hayden
November 1942 – 1943Family history
Wartime neighbourhood leader
In the county’s wartime Farm Volunteer Leader organisation, Norman, paired with Mrs. G. C. Wright, was one of Crystal’s neighbourhood leaders, who ran the scrap drives, fat salvage, transport and meat-sharing for the families around them. Martin and Walter were on the list of Crystal families, and Norman was still a leader in 1943.
John Norman Hayden, Johan Martin Bengtson Hayden, Walter Theodor Hayden
about 1943–1945Family history
Russell in the Navy
After Pocatello High School in 1943, Russell served in the Pacific aboard the carrier USS Enterprise as a fireman and gunner. He later took a geology degree and became an exploration geologist.
Russell Jack Hayden
October 1943Family history
A heated tractor cab
A wire story reported that the Crystal farmer Norman Hayden had mounted a coupe body on his tractor to make a heated cab.
John Norman Hayden
Generations
Fewer, larger farms; descendants on the old homesteads.
November 2, 1950Tragedy
Three killed in a light plane at the upper end of the valley
A Pocatello flight instructor and two students crashed in rain and fog soon after take-off; farmers heard the motor sputter but could not find the wreck in the dark.
April 1950Family history
John and Dora in Pocatello
By 1950 John, then 80, and Dora were living in Pocatello. Norman’s household at Crystal included Ben, Marie’s mother Hattie Krueger and her brother George.
John Hayden, Dora Ingeborg Torgersen Hayden, John Norman Hayden, Marie Gertrude Krueger Hayden and 1 more
1950Event
Ben Hayden comes home to run the Crystal farm
After his brother Norman died in September 1950, Ben Hayden, a Navy veteran of the USS Idaho, left Utah State and came back to manage the family’s Crystal farm and later bought it. He and June Stott married in February 1951 and began their life together in Crystal.
Ben Lynn Hayden, June Susie Stott Hayden
January 5, 1958Tragedy
Keith Hayden dies skiing near Crystal
Seventeen-year-old Keith Hayden, a Pocatello High senior from the Crystal farm family, died while skiing in Arbon Valley near Crystal.
John Norman Hayden
March 23–25, 1963Tragedy
Two charter planes lost in a snow squall
Two Pocatello charter planes coming home from Salt Lake City went down in a snow squall; two fliers died on the Ben Hayden ranch and the third pilot was found in the Deep Creek Mountains.
At the time of the archive’s accounts (2018–2019)Event
The valley the homesteaders made
The whole valley is now called Arbon. Of its four post offices (the accounts say five) one remains, in Pauline; instead of ten schools, Arbon Elementary teaches grades K–6 in two classrooms. The accounts name families still farming and ranching on or near the original homesteads, including Andersen, Bradley, Evans, Hayden, Hess, Jenson, Lusk, Swim, Ward and Williams.
Show 6 more from these years
May 27, 1956Event
“My town has come and gone”
Carl E. Hayden, who grew up on the Crystal homestead and became the Salt Lake Tribune’s roving correspondent, wrote of Crystal’s passing from a homestead community to a few large wheat farms — the average farm, he reported, had grown to about 1,200 acres. In 1963 he photographed the hard red wheat harvest on his brother Ben’s Crystal farm.
Carl Eskel Hayden, Ben Lynn Hayden
1962Family history
A winter home in Pocatello
From 1962 Ben and June kept a winter home in Pocatello as well as the Crystal farm.
Ben Lynn Hayden, June Susie Stott Hayden
1977–78Family history
Seventeen homesteads in one farm
By 1977–78 Ben Hayden owned and farmed seventeen of the old Crystal homesteads, about 2,500 acres, including the field around the old Crystal Cemetery.
1998–2006Family history
The Hayden water rights decreed
In the Snake River Basin Adjudication the family’s wells were decreed in 1998, two Clifton Creek rights of 1912 and 1927 in 2004, and the 1903 Rattlesnake Creek right whose original owner was J. H. Meadows in 2006. “Mid Crystal Farms” is the family farm name in the records.
2011–2019Event
Arbon Hay Days
An annual summer gathering for “anyone with a connection to Arbon Valley” — residents, former residents and friends — held from 2013 at Hayden’s Pond. In 2012 Lynn Andersen made the homemade root beer; the ninth Hay Days was held in July 2019.
2012–2016Tragedy
Lightning fires and the farmer firefighters
With no fire department, valley farmers fought lightning fires themselves; a new text-alert system raised the alarm in 2012, and in 2016 the Power Line fire burned more than 4,000 acres.
Firsts and tragedies
The valley firsts the Hayden family had a hand in, and the hard times it lived through, most remembered first.
What they built
Builders of Crystal homes
John Hayden and his brothers were carpenters who built several of the homes in the Crystal area.
Thirteen years of the Crystal mail
Margary Hayden took the Crystal mail into her home in December 1923, when nobody else wanted the office, and was postmaster from 1924 until her death in 1937; Delsa Fannin Hayden was the last postmaster named (1937–38).
State senator for Power County
Norman Hayden, a Crystal wheat grower and Democrat, sat in the Idaho Senate for Power County in the 1937–38 legislature.
Crystal school board
John Hayden was a Crystal trustee in 1916, chairman of the District 14 board in 1920, its clerk in 1921–23 and a trustee again in 1925.
Demonstration crops and the county farm programmes
John Hayden grew prize field peas as a county demonstration crop (1916–17); Norman chaired Crystal’s Agricultural Conservation committee (1936–38) and grew the county’s only certified Turkey Red seed wheat (1940); Walter seeded a crested-wheatgrass demonstration plot (1936).
Photographs
Portraits and family groups first. Each opens with its caption, date and where it came from.
The Bengtson-Hayden and Jensen families at the Jensen place, Crystal, about 1934–38About 1934–1938
John, Dora, granddaughter Neva, and Ben HaydenDate unknownJohn HaydenDate unknown3 PHOTOGRAPHS · 1 LAND PATENT · 1 FAMILY TREEOpen the Hayden family album ↗
Sources and open questions
Everything above comes from the archive’s family histories and the public records the valley map checked them against. Where accounts disagree, the page says so rather than choosing silently.
Where the accounts differ
- The entry year 1913 is confirmed by the land-office serial (month about July, probable); 1918 is probably the year of final proof and March 11, 1919, is the patent date.
- When John emigrated (about 1889 or 1891) and how long the family stayed in Sweden (return 1909 or 1911) are unresolved.
Sources 20
Show every source
- HaydenMelinda Campbell · posted 2019
- John Hayden & Dora Ingeborg TorgersenMelinda Campbell · posted 2019
- Crystal (area history)Jacob Andersen · posted 2018
- The Ben Hayden Family (FamilySearch document)Not named (written after 1988, "For Oscar")
- Walter Hayden (FamilySearch story)A grandchild (not named)
- Russell Jack Hayden, Find a Grave memorial 173653090Obituary added by LaRee White Engel
- FamilySearch Family Tree — public person summariesFamilySearch contributors
- John and Dora Hayden (FamilySearch document)Not named; draws on a former teacher’s memories (written after 1992)
- Hayden Family History, revised 2024 (FamilySearch document)Not named; from notes by Honor Thorson Schwid and Oscar Jensen and interviews with Russell Hayden and Ramona Hayden Hazlett
- Moses Fannin Families History Book, 2019 (FamilySearch document)Compiled by Mark Edwin Whiting, from family memoirs written 1956–2018
- Homestead patent to John A. B. Hayden, March 11, 1919 (BLM IDBL 0014605): Lot 1, SE¼NE¼, E½SE¼ Sec. 5 T9S R34E; Blackfoot serial 014605Bureau of Land Management, General Land Office
- Homestead patent to Martin Hayden, August 19, 1919 (BLM IDBL 0017272): S½SE¼, NE¼SE¼ Sec. 33 and NW¼SW¼ Sec. 34 T8S R34EBureau of Land Management, General Land Office
- NARA M841, Record of Appointment of Postmasters: Power County, Idaho (register pages 87-88 and cards)National Archives (Post Office Department)
- NARA T857, Extension Service Annual Reports: Idaho, 1913-1944 (Power and Oneida county agents’ narratives)National Archives (RG 33, Extension Service)
- 1920 U.S. census, Arbon precinct, Power County, Idaho, ED 224 (Andersen and Pett households, dwellings 18–22)U.S. Census Bureau
- 1930 U.S. census, Power County, Idaho, ED 39-5 (Crystal precinct)U.S. Census Bureau (NARA T626 roll 402)
- Salt Lake Tribune, August 24, 1936, page 8: Norman Hayden, Crystal wheat grower, wins the Democratic nomination for state senator from Power County
- Salt Lake Tribune, May 27, 1956, page 96: Carl E. Hayden’s feature on Crystal’s decline
- American Falls Press, 1923-12-13, page 7 (Crystal column: Mrs. Martin Hayden appointed to the post office, moves the mail to her home)
- Western States Marriage Record Index no. 79457: John A. B. Hayden × Dora E. Torgeson, Pocatello, August 29, 1903BYU-Idaho Special Collections
Research notes
- The homestead is placed at the centre of the 1919 patent (Lot 1, SE¼NE¼ and E½SE¼ Sec. 5 T9S R34E); the older point in central Crystal, at the Sec. 8/9 line, is kept for the 1923–37 post office.
- Margary Hayden’s family were the Howells of Pocatello (Welsh): her brother David J. Howells farmed at Crystal about 1920–24 (the 1920 census household transcribed “Thornley” reads Howells), and her mother, Mrs. M. J. Howells, probably held the 1918 cash patent next to Martin’s homestead. They are not the Howells of Pauline.
- The Kruegers of upper Rattlesnake Creek were Norman Hayden’s in-laws (Marie, 1937); see the krueger family record.
- Emma Hayden’s husband Harry Chapin was probably a brother of Alyce Chapin Andersen of Arbon; their daughter Kaye was probably the Chapin niece in Harold and Alyce Andersen’s 1950 household.
- Keep apart: the Crystal Jensens (Hayden nephews from Omaha) are not related to the Jenson family of Summit; June Stott Hayden’s Utah Stotts are not the Arbon Stotts.