A place of homesteads, school days, hard winters, and enduring connections. Begin with the landscape, then follow the people who called it home.
A valley with many names and memories
Arbon Valley lies in southeastern Idaho. Older accounts call it Bannock Valley and describe several distinct communities, each with its own schools, gathering places, and family stories. Today’s collection brings those accounts together through five places: Pauline and West Fork, Crystal, Arbon, Summit, and Buist.
Start with the Arbon area history for the account of irrigation, homesteading, and the name of the valley. Then explore a family, a place, or a photograph.
Catherine Gibbons's life sketch remembers her father Andrew Andersen, his work in Mendon, and his part in helping his sons establish homesteads in Bannock Valley.
Browse 22 preserved school photographs, with the names and identifications supplied by community contributors.
BEFORE THESE HOMESTEADING ACCOUNTS
A longer, living history
The Shoshone-Bannock Tribes describe ancestral lands extending across present-day Idaho and neighboring regions. Their own history explains the Fort Bridger Treaty of 1868 and the Fort Hall Reservation. Their Language and Cultural Preservation Department continues work on languages, traditions, archives, and historical research.
These tribal sources provide essential context alongside this archive’s homesteading accounts. This introduction does not represent a tribal-authored or tribal-reviewed history of Arbon Valley.
An interactive map adds the families, homesteads, ditches, schools and churches year by year, from the first claims of 1884. Every entry leads to its source in this archive.
The surviving collection is strongest in homesteading families and their descendants. More first-person accounts from women, workers, families who moved away, and later arrivals would help broaden it. Many photographs still need dates and names.