Watch the valley settle.
An interactive map of how Arbon Valley was settled: the families, homesteads, ditches, schools and churches, added year by year from the archive’s own accounts.
Read the timeline as a list ↓The valley’s timeline, in its own words.
A reading path through recorded events. Dates describe the events in the cited accounts; the source pages retain their original publication dates.
before 1884Before Homesteading
A Shoshone and Bannock homeland; trails, travelers and cattle range.
- Before the homesteading accounts
A Shoshone and Bannock homeland
The Shoshone-Bannock Tribes describe ancestral lands extending across present-day Idaho and neighboring regions. Settler accounts in this archive add that the valley was known to native hunters long before homesteading, that Mine Canyon was a route by which Native people entered the valley to hunt, and that the valley and its creek were named Bannock for the Bannock people.
Shoshone-Bannock Tribes — About (tribal history) ↗ - 1849–1859
The Hudspeth Cutoff crosses Summit and Buist
Promoted in 1849 by Benoni Hudspeth as a faster way to the California gold fields, the cutoff came west from Soda Springs, dropped into the valley in the Summit area, followed the valley floor south and turned west through Bull Canyon to Twin Springs. One historian estimated 45,000 emigrants used it in 1850 alone — about 250 wagons a day.
Buist (area history) ↗ - 1868
Fort Bridger Treaty and the Fort Hall Reservation
The archive's timeline points to the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes' own history for the Fort Bridger Treaty of 1868 and the establishment of the Fort Hall Reservation, whose southern boundary later met the north end of the valley.
Shoshone-Bannock Tribes — About (tribal history) ↗
1884–1892Early Claims
Possessory claims and water rights before the valley opened.
- 1884–1892
Possessory claims and water rights
Before the valley was formally opened to homesteading, settlers took up "possessory" claims — squatter's rights — and filed on water. When homesteading opened they had to file again and prove up over five years.
Arbon (area history) ↗ - March 1885
David Moroni Daniels comes to West Fork
David Moroni Daniels, from Malad, came into the snowbound valley in March 1885. The family overview and the archive timeline date his water-right application on the Bannock Creek drainage to 1885; his biography says the first legal record is a water right granted in 1887, fed by the large West Fork spring.
Daniels ↗ - June 1892
Bowen and Davis look for land and water
David John Bowen and Samuel Deer Davis came over the mountain from Samaria, near Malad, in June 1892. They found water coming out of Knox Canyon that sank underground before reaching the valley floor and decided ditches could carry it to fields. Work on a ditch began that fall with help from Samaria; everyone went home for the winter.
Arbon (area history) ↗
1893–18991890s Settlement
Homesteads, the first ditch, and the first winters.
- 1893
Homesteading opens
The Arbon area timeline marks 1893 as the year homesteading opened; settlers with earlier claims had to re-apply. Filing on 160 acres cost $16, then five years of fencing, breaking ground and building a cabin to prove up. The first families — Andersens, Daniels, Arbons and Evans among them — lived in wagon boxes, tents or dugouts.
Arbon (area history) ↗ - August 1893
Irrigation company organized in Samaria
The earliest meeting of what became the Bannock Valley Irrigation Company took place in Samaria. Its purpose was to own and control the water of Knox Creek through dams, ditches, pipes, flumes and reservoirs. Members pooled money, labor, equipment and horse teams, and kept detailed minutes — down to the pay for each man's work and team.
Lorenzo Bowen Evans & Anna Morse ↗ - 1893–1895 (accounts differ)
A mile-and-a-half ditch from Knox Canyon
Working together, the settlers dug a ditch about one and a half miles long from the mouth of Knox Canyon to land they held by squatter's rights. The Davis account dates it to 1893, the Arbon area history to 1894, and the George Arbon biography to 1895. In later years it grew to several miles.
Davis ↗ - 1894
Families come for the summer
Spring 1894 brought back the Samaria homesteaders and others from Cache Valley, including the Andersen brothers on the east side of the Arbon area. Ed and Esther Arbon Davis came with their baby, and George Arbon brought his motherless children. Families shared what they had: wire to fence small fields, D. J. Bowen's Osborne dropper to cut grain, and a thresher brought from Samaria through Mine Canyon.
Arbon (area history) ↗ - 1893–1894
First water rights in Summit
Peter Larsen and Stephen Longstroth filed the earliest Summit water rights; Larsen and Walter Fredrick filed more in June 1894, and Larsen and Joseph T. Wood made the first homestead claims there. Early Summit names included Hardman, Jenson, King, Larsen, Orison, Sorensen and Wood.
Summit (area history) ↗ - winter 1893–94 or 1894–95 (accounts differ)
George and Joe Arbon stay the winter
Everyone else went back to Malad, Samaria or Cache Valley for the winter, but George Arbon and his son Joe stayed — the first settlers to winter in the valley. Joe remembered blizzards lasting a day, snow drifted to the eaves, and prying the door open to breathe after the chimney smoked. Since then the valley has never been completely vacated in winter.
Arbon (area history) ↗ - 18 March 1895
Bannock Valley Irrigation Company filed
The company was formally filed in Samaria. Edward Davis held 4⅗ shares and Lorenzo Evans four; George Arbon was a charter member. Within a few years the canal from Knox Canyon reached the Bowen place on present Bowen Lane.
Edward Henry Davis & Esther Rebecca Arbon ↗ - 1895
Settlement begins at Pauline
People started settling the Pauline area in 1895. Prominent first residents included Bolingbrokes, Lusks, Kowallises, Daniels, Davises, Evans and Nobles. Pauline grew into a crossroads with a store and post office on the roads to American Falls and Pocatello.
Pauline and West Fork (area history) ↗ - winter 1896–97; blizzard 7–10 April 1897
A hard winter and an April blizzard
The winter of 1896–97 was severe. Its worst blizzard came late, on 7 April, and did not let up until 10 April.
James Richard Bailey 1867–1948 (FamilySearch story) ↗ - 1897 (some accounts: 1898)
A post office named Arbon
The settlers' first proposed name, "Mountain Side," was rejected as too long, so the post office was named Arbon for George Arbon, the oldest of the first settlers — though he said he was too poor that year to buy a two-cent stamp. Mail came about weekly from Malad over Rocky Ridge, carried at first by the settlers in turn. The first mail out, on 7 October 1898, was three letters.
Arbon (area history) ↗ - by 1898
The ditch reaches the Ward fields
By 1898 the ditch out of Knox Canyon was several miles long, reaching Jesse N. Ward's upper fields. Long-time residents later said neither Knox nor Buck Wright Canyon proved a very reliable source of water.
Arbon (area history) ↗ - 1898
Buist is homesteaded
Brigham Young Mansfield, an English immigrant from Samaria, started a ranch in the Buist area and promoted the lower valley to other Samaria men. Families soon took every 160 acres — four to a square mile. Early names still familiar include Bird, Hardman, Hess, Jensen, Marble and Willie.
Buist (area history) ↗
1900–1912Early 1900s Growth
Schools, churches, stores and post offices in every area.
- August 1900
Arbon LDS Ward organized
The Arbon Ward was organized in David Bowen's home with about ten families and a few single men; Ed Davis served in the first bishopric. Meetings moved among private homes, and for decades church was held only in the summer months, when families were in the valley.
Arbon (area history) ↗ - 1901–1902
A log building for school, church and dances
The community hauled logs from the canyons and built a 20×36-foot building "by everyone, regardless of church affiliation," on land donated by Lorenzo and Chloa Bailey beside the George Arbon homestead. It served as Valley View School, meetinghouse, dance hall and public meeting place; around 1904 the logs were covered with lumber.
Arbon (area history) ↗ - 1907
Crystal's first proved-up homestead
Crystal was homesteaded later than the rest of the valley. Joseph Meadows was the first to prove up (1907), followed by John Johnston and Henry Kettler (1909). 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.
Crystal (area history) ↗ - 1909
Buist post office
As homesteaders filled the south end, a post office opened, named for homesteader William Buist.
Buist (area history) ↗ - 1910
Crystal post office
The Crystal post office opened with Cora Snyder as first postmistress. There was 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.
Crystal (area history) ↗ - by spring 1910
Every farmable acre is taken up
Cattle and horses grazed the open country until 1907. Returning in the spring of 1910, George Andersen found that "every piece of land that could be farmed was settled on," by newcomers from as far as eastern Washington and from Cache Valley: "the valley became alive with people."
George L. Andersen: the valley years, in his own words ↗ - 1910
Ed Davis opens a general store
Ed Davis's false-fronted general store near his home was the best in the valley to that time, well stocked with staples and selling gasoline and kerosene. Many homesteaders went eleven months a year without cash; one wrote that her family would have starved without his credit.
Edward Henry Davis & Esther Rebecca Arbon ↗ - about 1910–1912
Jenson Pass is built
Farmers asked Oneida County for a real road to Malad, the county seat. In 1910 the county hired Summit homesteader Joseph C. Jenson to supervise it. Neighbors worked behind a horse-drawn Fresno scraper and blasted rock with giant powder; the narrow road had only a few turnouts. Sacked wheat took six horses to reach the divide.
Summit (area history) ↗ - January 1911
Three children lost at a flooded crossing
After a January thaw and Chinook wind filled every creek, the Ezra Taft Andersen and Delbert (Dell C.) Dalton families were going home together when their box overturned in fast water. Mr. Dalton lifted it off the others; Mrs. Dalton and Eva Andersen held children by their feet. Eight-year-old George and two-month-old Dora Dalton and six-year-old Nicholas Andersen were swept away and found downstream the next morning. They were buried in the Pauline Cemetery.
Arbon (area history) ↗ - about 1911
Meadow Ward in West Fork
The Meadow LDS Ward was created in West Fork, meeting in a T-shaped log building, with Wilhelm Kowallis — whose mother Pauline gave the area its name — as first bishop and Anna E. Lusk as first Relief Society president. Daniels, Lusk and Bolingbroke families attended.
Pauline and West Fork (area history) ↗ - 1912
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.
Crystal (area history) ↗
1913–1929Community Development
A new county, roads and phones — and the first departures.
- about 1913
The valley is divided between two counties
Oneida County was divided and the northern part of the valley went to the new Power County, with American Falls as county seat. The line ran just south of Magnus Andersen's place; Summit and Buist stayed in Oneida.
Lars Magnus Andersen ↗ - 1913
Churches in Buist, Crystal and Summit
In one year the outlying areas organized congregations: the Buist Branch (reorganized in 1915 as the Meadow View Ward), an LDS meetinghouse built near the Crystal school, the Canyon Branch in Summit (June 1913), and a Protestant Community Church in Summit on an acre given by Mamie Nunnelley.
Buist (area history) ↗ - fall 1915
Highland School, Summit
A two-room school was built beside the community church; attendance sometimes topped forty. It also hosted the Canyon Branch's Sunday meetings (first held there 15 December 1915) and social gatherings. Teachers at first boarded around with families.
Summit (area history) ↗ - about 1917 onward
Families begin to leave
With four families to a square mile, the valley was full — but a family could not live on 160 dry acres. From about 1917, and through the Depression, people moved away for better land, work and high schools, and those who stayed bought out their neighbors.
Pauline and West Fork (area history) ↗ - 1918–1928
Pauline wheat warehouse
The valley's only grain warehouse began as a raised platform across from the Pauline school, with Ed England buying wheat. Others hauled the sacks to the railroad docks at Schilling, near present I-86; it soon became a covered building and operated about ten years.
Pauline and West Fork (area history) ↗ - winter 1919
Horses driven into the mountains to survive
Deep snow lasted so long that by March the hay was gone. The men drove the horses into the mountains on the east side of the valley, where the ridges blew clear, and carried oats up to them on homemade skis every day or two.
John Christian Andersen (FamilySearch document) ↗ - about 1922
Crank phones on barbed wire
The earliest telephones in Buist came about 1922: crank phones, a ring pattern for each household, wires of barbed wire strung on fence posts — and party lines anyone could listen in on. The Pauline store already had a telephone in 1921.
Buist (area history) ↗ - 1928 (dedicated 1928 or 1929)
A new Arbon church house
A larger church was built across the road from the original log building, where the Arbon Pavilion now stands. Bishop Joe Arbon, who served about twenty-six years, oversaw its construction at a cost of about $11,000; members of every faith contributed time, labor and money, and it hosted community events for decades.
Arbon (area history) ↗ - 1928 – about 1941
From horses to tractors
Families who had harnessed up to eighteen horses a day changed over: the Arbons bought their first gasoline tractor in 1928, the Bolingbrokes a Caterpillar in the early 1930s, the Lusks traded their horses for a Model M crawler in 1937 ($1,650), and Mark Andersen's family bought its first tractor around 1941.
Joseph Nicholas Arbon ↗
1930–1949Depression & Change
Drought, closures, tractors, electricity, the reservation boundary.
- 1930–1941
Drought and Depression empty the outlying areas
Wartime prices collapsed and the rains failed. Summit's Canyon Branch dissolved in 1930, Buist School closed in 1931, Crystal's branch and Buist's Mountain View School in 1935, the Buist post office in 1936 and the Buist ward in 1937; Highland School in Summit closed about 1941.
Buist (area history) ↗ - about 1931
"Almost the whole ward moved"
After a five-year drought, with taxes unpaid, the Fannins, Len Whiting's family and about a dozen other Crystal families left together for the Hagle Ranch on Kirtley Creek near Salmon, taking the Whiting sawmill with them. Floyd Denning lost his land to the county for taxes.
Moses Fannin Families History Book, 2019 (FamilySearch document) ↗ - 1934 (others: "the 1930s," "late 1930s")
West Fork returns to the reservation
The federal government bought back the Big Meadows and West Fork lands and returned them to the Shoshone-Bannock (Fort Hall) Reservation, moving the boundary about five miles south. Homesteading families were paid but had to relocate; today no roads reach the old ranch sites.
Daniels ↗ - 1945 (Buist about 1947)
Electric power arrives
Through the Rural Electrification program, power reached Arbon Valley in 1945 and the Buist area about 1947. Families who had relied on coal-oil lamps, a Delco plant, wind chargers — or, at the Bradley ranch, a water wheel on Rattlesnake Creek — now bought electric stoves and refrigerators.
Ephraim Thomas Bolingbroke ↗ - 26 Dec 1948 – 22 Mar 1949
The winter of 1948–49
A seventeen-day storm alternated south winds with west blizzards; families were snowed in from the day after Christmas until 22 March. Mail was flown from Pocatello and dropped in a field, rural carrier Sod Williams delivered it on horseback, and hay was airlifted to ranchers who could not reach their stacks.
Winter of 1948-49 Hits Hard In Arbon ↗
1950 onwardGenerations
Fewer, larger farms; descendants on the old homesteads.
- about 1959
The valley road is oiled
The gravel road from Holbrook north through the valley to the Crystal turn was first oiled about 1959. (A Bolingbroke account says the highway was paved about the time electricity came in 1945.) Joe Arbon called hard-surfaced roads to the ranch one of his fondest dreams come true.
Buist (area history) ↗ - 1965
Party lines give way to dial phones
Joe Arbon, with Sod Williams and Claude Gibbons, raised $200 subscriptions from about thirty valley families to replace the barbed-wire lines and crank phones with a modern dial system. (Buist had moved off crank phones in 1952.)
Joseph Nicholas Arbon ↗ - At the time of the archive's accounts (2018–2019)
The valley the homesteaders made
The whole valley is now called Arbon. Instead of five post offices there is one, 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.
Arbon (area history) ↗
These are the turning points. The map shows all 140 dated events, 94 more than this list, and the community archive carries the valley’s own news from 2010 to 2020. Open the valley map ↑