Pomeroy Pioneer Portraits

Ten Years Ago

March 9, 2011

Pomeroy School District recently purchased a smaller, Type A school bus holding 16 passengers seated by twos in eight sets of seats.

Pomeroy Community Center received a $2,000 Community Garden grant from the Harold and Helen Shepherd Foundation and a $1,500 grant from the Puget Sound Energy Foundation toward the “Let’s Get the Lights On” segment of the restoration and preservation of the Seeley Theatre and Opera House.

Twenty-Five Years Ago

March 13, 1996

Pomeroy native Dr. Scott Bartlow will begin practicing at Pomeroy Medical Clinic this week.

Garfield County hospital district commissioners unanimously accepted a substance abuse policy calling for pre-screening of all new hires at the district and random screening of all current employees by year’s end.

Nine junior girls will be competing for the title of Pomeroy’s Junior Miss for 1996-97.

Fifty Years Ago

March 11, 1971

The “peppery” Pomeroy Pirates, took third in the State Class “A” basketball tournament.

Just about every vacant house in rural Garfield County has been entered and ransacked, according to Sheriff Russell Pierce. Fortunately the county has few vacant homes, as those that have been entered have been robbed of practically everything worth taking, including furniture, canned goods, bedding and even stovepipe.

Chuck Young, with 12 coyotes bagged, won the Wenaha-Cattleman Coyote Contest held last month. Bud Slaybaugh was second with nine, Jim Tardiff had three, and Max Scoggin and Lonnie Ruchert both had one each.

Seventy-Five Years Ago

March 7, 1946

John Malone, manager of McKeirnan Hardware & Implement Company, reports plans have been completed for a new building to cost $25, 000 to replace their present structure on Main Street the firm has occupied since 1910. The new structure will be modern in every respect, 40 feet wide and 120 feet long.

Bluford Thornton and Max Ruchert took a three-day outing into the Blue mountains recently, encountering snow drifts 30 feet deep. At Cougar Springs they saw a bull elk living in eight feet of snow, surviving by browsing on moss that he was able to reach on the trees and appearing to be in good condition.

The Pomeroy Bakery, inactivated when the baker, Richard Keatts, was serving in the armed forces, will open again under the ownership of Jake Cormier, and assisted by Jack Denny. The bakery will do both a wholesale and retail business in its new location in the Revere Hotel building.

One Hundred Years Ago

March 12, 1921

Mention of the “Marengo grade” still sends shivers down the spine of the timid motor car driver, but the road itself lost a large number of the reasons for its unenviable reputation Friday. A roster of the road crew responsible for the repair work includes the name of a representative from nearly every Pomeroy business, as well as the residents of the Tucannon valley in the Marengo vicinity and many Garfield County farmers. Among the accomplishments of the volunteer road workers was the removal by blasting of the car-racking “stair steps” at the rock cliff near the foot of the grade. The grade was widened in several places, and was surfaced with gravel at the foot and on the ridge above the first lap.

One hundred thousand Eastern brook trout fry comprise the first allotment of the season from the state hatcheries for Garfield County streams and will be ready for delivery from the Walla Walla hatchery within a few days.

The store and post office building at Peola, owned by J.F. Mills, was saved from burning last week by the prompt action of A.T. Berringer, whose seven-year-old daughter, Alta, saw the smoke and told her father. The fire was burning lively when he arrived on the scene, but with a dozen bucket of water the flames were extinguished.

One Hundred Twenty-Five Years Ago

March 7, 1896

F.N. Zinn has had a large force of men at work putting up ice the past week.

Monday the four-year-old son of Joseph Rubenser died suddenly of spinal meningitis. He was sick only about an hour.

The hard wind last Friday blew down quite a number of fences in the Tukanon section of the country. Hope it won’t occur very often for we don’t like to build fences very well.

Tommy Ronon was visiting in this vicinity a short time ago. He takes the blue ribbon in the way of the latest fashion, as to standing in with the girls. He has found out by some miraculous means that girls are all lovers of fine music. So, he has purchased himself a concert roller organ which he takes along when he goes calling on the girls; and O, my! how they do smile when they see him coming.

Charley Chard, of Pataha creek, was over Saturday looking along the King orchard for a desirable location to “swipe” apples next summer. Now Chas. We think you had better look out, the King boys are on to you, and you had better make your visits just as brief as possible in that direction, or you may have to go out over the fence in a fox trot with a full charge of buckshot and shingle nails in your tall carcass.