Child’s Grave Only Reminder of Failed Daniels Town Dream 

By Mary Matthews, Journal Correspondent 

A tiny grave on a high hill marks what was once the dream of that baby’s grandfather, for a permanent townsite in the Daniels area of Oneida County. 

Fifty-five years ago, homesteaders had already begun an exodus from their allotted 160 acres, but Willard Archibald still hoped to establish a townsite, complete with cemetery, halfway between East and West Daniels.  He would donate the land. 

There were schools at Dairy Creek north of the Daniels area, at East and at West Daniels, and schools in Upper and Lower Elkhorn.  Roads were pure mud spring and fall, deep dust all summer and buried under several feet of snow all winter.  Dances at various schoolhouses were community events, often lasting through the night, with babies and smaller children sleeping through the night’s festivities atop piles of coats and blankets, brought along to keep the travelers warm in horse-drawn sleighs.  Church services were held in East and in West Daniels school houses, with two LDS wards established. 

Farm families lived on every half section or so of land, while a few, like Archibald, had enlarged their holdings by purchasing homesteads offered for sale as soon as the original owner had made the necessary improvements and obtain title.  Quite a number of homesteaders had no intention of staying on their 160 acres.  They filed claim, improved just enough to get title and then sold, regarding the process as means of getting a “stake” to do something else. 

Archibald raised mules, much needed for farming and draying in those days, as well as cattle and horses.  His eight sons helped him, as his two daughters did their mother. 

One son, Lee, later an instructor at Idaho State University, Pocatello, Trade and Tech, married a neighboring farm girl, Lillian Gibson.  It is their second child, a son, who is buried in what his grandfather hoped would be a permanent community cemetery.  It is the only burial ever made at the site.