Frontier Foundations, Idaho to Salt Lake City
Lorenzo Wesley "Wes" Robbins was born on 5 December 1899 in Oakley, Idaho, on the family farm on Water Street. By the time he was born, his father, Lorenzo Wilson Robbins, had already moved the family through several stages of western settlement.
When his father brought the family to Oakley in 1891, they lived in a two-room log cabin on a small ranch. In 1894 he added two additional rooms, planted orchards, cultivated alfalfa, and worked both the farm and a local store. Farming alone was not enough; enterprise was always part of the plan.
In 1901 Lorenzo filed on a homestead near Burley, drawn by irrigation projects that were turning high desert into productive farmland. But the family did not leave Oakley immediately. In 1904 he built a substantial brick home in the center of town. The brick home marked a substantial change from the earlier log structure. Photographs of the house reflect that the family had moved beyond subsistence living by that time.
Wes's early childhood unfolded in a place that was no longer raw frontier, but still very much agricultural. He grew up watching land cleared, houses enlarged, businesses formed, and risk taken. Relocation and expansion were recurring features of the family's economic strategy.
In 1906 Lorenzo sold the Oakley home and moved the family permanently to the Burley homestead.
During the summer of 1906, Lorenzo constructed a seven-room brick ranch house on the Burley farm. It was reportedly the first home in the area to have running water, pumped from a windmill into a storage tank that supplied hot and cold water indoors. The presence of indoor running water reflects early adoption of modern improvements.
Burley itself was new. Irrigation canals had transformed dry land into farms, and settlers were arriving with both ambition and capital. Lorenzo was not content to farm alone. In January 1906 he began operating the Snake River Implement Company, selling and distributing agricultural machinery. The operation was headquartered in Burley with connections into Twin Falls. Agriculture and commerce operated side by side in Wes's childhood environment.
Wes grew up in a household where livestock, machinery, crops, bookkeeping, and business discussions were normal parts of life. The family combined agriculture with business investment.
In 1914, when Wes was fourteen, the family moved from the farm into Burley city. That same year his mother, Lucynthia, died. Her loss marked a significant shift in the household. Family accounts describe her as alert and capable, the same woman who once drove a sheep wagon to secure the homestead in her husband's absence. With her death, that steady presence was gone.
In 1915 the family relocated again, this time to Salt Lake City. The frontier farms of Oakley and Burley were behind them. Salt Lake offered streetcars, high schools, and a faster pace of life.
These years were unsettled for the family. Wes's sisters moved on: Jennie married in 1915 and Florida attended LDS University for a time before serving a mission in California. Lorenzo remarried in December 1915. Lorenzo Wilson Robbins's memoir states that for a period Wes and his brother Golden lived with the Norman Lloyd family. After Lorenzo married Lillian, they lived with their father and stepmother at the Athena Apartments.
Wes and Golden both attended East High School. Wes played football, suggesting he was not merely present but engaged. His adolescence shifted quickly from irrigation ditches and farm equipment to classrooms and organized athletics. This move marked a transition from rural to urban life.
Vennetta's upbringing in Salt Lake City had been structured and urban. Wes's childhood had been shaped by farms, irrigation projects, and family enterprise in southern Idaho. By the mid-1910s, however, both were in Salt Lake City — and that is where their paths crossed.
On January 4th, 1918, just one month after his eighteenth birthday, Wes enlisted in the United States Marine Corps. Family stories later suggested he was "too young" and that his father had to sign for him. The documents tell a different story. His discharge papers confirm that he was legally of age.
He entered service at Mare Island, California, during World War I. Although he did not serve overseas in combat, he spent four years in the Marine Corps, from 1918 to 1922. These were formative years. His service placed him in structured environments emphasizing hierarchy and responsibility. His later record reflects that discipline and structured responsibility continued.
He was discharged on January 3rd, 1922, as a Sergeant with expert rifleman qualifications. He returned to Utah and attended the University of Utah for approximately 1.5 years. He worked in the mines during the summers to support himself. The Marine Corps did not make him a civic leader, but it placed him in environments where hierarchy, responsibility, and structure were expected.