Pomeroy Pioneer Portraits

Ten Years Ago

September 1, 2010

Puget Sound Energy completed the purchase of more than nine acres of land just outside Pomeroy for the future site of an operations and maintenance facility for the utility’s Lower Snake River Wind Project.

Local firefighters responded to another mutual-assistance call from Columbia County on Thursday, when large fires start by harvest operations in the county eventually spread east into Garfield County. The Hubbard Fire eventually burned 11,500 acres across the two counties.

Twenty-Five Years Ago

September 6, 1995

Pomeroy United Methodist Church will offer a “contemporary service” starting this Sunday at 8:30 a.m., according to Pastor Jon Cortese. A band with keyboard, guitars and drums is the service’s major component with no liturgy, formal prayers or any traditional elements of worship, and casual dress is encouraged. A traditional service will still be held at 11 a.m.

Pomeroy FFA Alumni report that Miss Piggy, “that pink, curvaceous porcine creature,” will strut her stuff during Garfield County Fair parade.

Fifty Years Ago

September 3, 1970

Fires, fires and more fires began popping up from one end of the Pomeroy district of the Umatilla National Forest to the other after lightning hit hard Sunday evening in the Blue Mountains. Neil Zander, fire protection officer for the district, said Tuesday evening that 27 fires caused from the current storm had been named by crews. Last weekend, weary and short-handed crews had just gotten off the bad Wenatchee canyon fire only to be called out again on an around-the-clock basis. Zander says that to date the district has had 74 fires.

Robert Scott, 25, of Portland, became Garfield county’s second traffic fatality of 1970 when the motorcycle he was riding struck the rear of an automobile one mile west of Pomeroy on Highway 12.

Strong vocal and written opposition to the construction of a transmission line from Little Goose to Lower Granite dam across Garfield County farmlands above the Snake river apparently has so far not brought the desired results. Bonneville Power Administration officials announced at a meeting here that after study no changes in the route are planned.

Seventy-Five Years Ago

August 30, 1945

Garfield County citizens, and in particular Mr. and Mrs. Albert Schuelke, took hope that their son, John Schuelke, may be alive after radio news announced that some 300 crew members of the USS Huston, the cruiser than was sunk by the Japanese off Java on February 27, 1942, were prisoners of war. The ship’s crew totaled 750 men.

Thirteen school buses will begin hauling regularly some 200 students residing in the country into Pomeroy to attend school.

One Hundred Years Ago

September 4, 1920

High wind prevented operating the boat at Central Ferry crossing Sunday and stopped traffic for four hours, according to W.F. Hull. There were six cars waiting on the south bank and about as many on the north bank, and some cattle besides.

The oldest business as conducted continuously under one proprietor, in Pomeroy, changed hands Monday when C.W. Simonson bought the Gerhardt barber shop. Mr. Gerhardt opened his shop here in 1882.

Cards advertising E.T. Coman’s candidacy for governor were dropped from an airplane which flew over Pomeroy Friday.

One Hundred Twenty-Five Years Ago

August 31, 1895

Otto Koenig is sick with typhoid fever at the St. George Hotel.

An almost unbroken chain of forest fires is still raging in the mountains and the smoke and dust in the lower regions are almost unendurable.

Spokane Chronicle, referring to the Ellensburg lynching, says: A paper that isn’t afraid to tell its subscribers when they have made star-spangled idiots of themselves and have done something that is wicked and cowardly and disgraceful all around—such a paper as that can do some real good in a community.

Divorce, or Woman Against Woman, at the opera house tonight. Go and spend a pleasant evening.

A Lewiston Flat correspondent of Asotin Sentinel says: It is a favorite plan with youthful, bashful swains to first gain the good will of pa and ma before laying formal siege to their fair but coy charmers. This is a safe plan, but to the list to be first conciliated should be added the family watchdog. A young man from Garfield County, upon a recent visit here, attempted to ignore the faithful dog and now mourns the loss of one leg of his unmentionables.

Hon. N.C. Williams brought to town a wagonload of fine fruit, consisting of pears, plums and apples, and by dint of hard work succeeded in disposing of 45 cents’ worth.