Pomeroy Pioneer Portraits

Ten Years Ago

September 29, 2010

A Garfield County resident was arrested and taken into custody by county deputies after an indoor marijuana grow operation was found in the subject’s home.

Donna’s Café was broken into on September 10, with a safe and an undetermined amount of money taken. Two other businesses were broken into on the same night earlier in the month.

The recent Red Cross Blood Drive held at the Catholic School yielded 120% of the goal set for the day’s donations with thirty local residents giving blood.

Twenty-Five Years Ago

October 4, 1995

The congregation at Pomeroy’s St. Peter’s Episcopal Church announced Fr. James Bean, currently of Indiana, will be the new priest effective Nov. 1.

Washington State Parks and Recreation has developed a new trail that will allow easy access by people using wheelchairs at the Palouse Falls overlook.

Washington State University and the Washington Wheat Commission jointly announced a $1 million gift to WSU for construction of a high technology wheat research facility.

Fifty Years Ago

October 1, 1970

Freshman candidate Julie Cox was named Carnival Queen and FFA Chapter Sweetheart at the annual FFA-FHA carnival held last Saturday.

A State Highway Department maintainer parked in Peola, a county road department Michigan crane parked south of Columbia Center, and a car parked in Pataha belonging to Larry Milward, all had equipment vandalized, or supplies, tires and wheels stolen recently.

Some 742 acres of land have been seeded from the air by Floyd Carr helicopter for erosion control in logged-off areas in the Pomeroy District of the Umatilla National Forest.

Bill Taylor will be a write-in candidate for Garfield County Sheriff, opposing Deputy Sheriff Russell Pierce, the lone candidate who filed for the position.

Two local Navy men, Dave Damron and Jeff Kralman, stationed overseas on separate ships, had the unexpected opportunity earlier this month to visit each other when their ships were awaiting orders at Subic Bay. Kralman realized when looking over mail from home that someone else from Pomeroy was either on his ship or the one moored alongside and his search resulted in the brief reunion.

Seventy-Five Years Ago

September 27, 1945

Three automobile accidents occurring Friday and Saturday on the Alpowa grade, Pomeroy-Clarkston highway, took their toll causing eleven injuries to servicemen, many of whom were wearing overseas service decorations. The occupants of two of the cars involved in wrecks were on their way to the Lewiston Roundup. The third car and its occupants had been sent from the Walla Walla base to investigate the first wreck.

Since the announcement by the Surplus Property Board that surplus military hospital equipment will be sold to rural communities at prices based on need in the community, rather than on cost to the government, the Garfield County Hospital commissioners-elect have been making plans to equip the proposed hospital with such military surplus.

One Hundred Years Ago

October 2, 1920

The school board is placing some playground apparatus on the old grounds, much to the delight of the students. Heretofore these children had no play except to tear around, but now they are getting some constructive ideas.

Due to the extremely large third and fifth grades at the Pomeroy school, Miss Ethel Kelly has been hired to take charge of the overflow from both grades.

One Hundred Twenty-Five Years Ago

September 28, 1895

A heavy frost visited this region of country last week, cutting down melons and squashes and doing considerable damage to garden stock generally.

Ed. Dickson won the mile novice race at Colfax and Lester Gibson won the half-mile class “A” race. Am Dickson led the 5-mile crowd to the last round and should have taken second place instead of the “header” he received by colliding with a reckless rider.

These frosty nights induce the festive tramp to turn his footsteps toward the sunny south, where he can bask in the mellow sunshine, and where the soft zephyrs will blow through his whiskers.

Between the tumbleweed, wild lettuce, cockle, thistle and mustard some of our farms are soon going to have a struggle for supremacy. Some ranches now are getting pretty foul. We noticed, one day this week, fields that had been summer-fallowed but were grown over thick with tumbleweed, which in a short time will be broken off by the wind and sent rolling over the ground scattering the seed far and wide. The wild lettuce seeds are carried by the wind for miles. It seems that our climate favors the spread of all sorts of weeds. The time is near at hand when we shall have a big fight on our hands with these pests.