Pomeroy Pioneer Portraits

Ten Years Ago

June 15, 2011

After last week’s election filing period, it appears Pomeroy will have a new mayor next year, as Paul Miller was the only candidate to file. Incumbent Alan Gould did not file for re-election.

Garfield County will hold an open house at the newly renovated Courthouse on June 24. County offices are set to open for business next week in their regular locations in the building.

Twenty-Five Years Ago

June 19, 1996

Pomeroy will see an influx of between 1,000 and 2,000 visitors over the next couple of weeks when Pacific Rendezvous ’96 kicks off this weekend on Sunflower Flats in the Umatilla National Forest. Pacific Rendezvous Corporation is a group of people who, through a love of history, strive to recreate the period of time (1800-45) of the “mountain men-fur trappers.”

Toots Farrell has received permission from Howard and Marilyn Armstrong, owners of the burned-out property on Main St. next to Berglund’s Food City, to make improvements to the boarded-up area. They also sent a $200 check as a contribution to the project, called the Armstrong Main St. Project.

Pomeroy firefighters spent three and a half hours putting out a grass fire last week at Dodge Junction. The fire, a controlled burn that was whipped out of control by a wind gust, covered 150 acres of pasture and Conservation Reserve Program lands.

Fifty Years Ago

June 13, 1971

Wide community opposition is beginning to develop to the Bonneville Power Administration’s plan to run its Lower Granite-Little Goose 500 KV transmission line through the hearts of a large number of Garfield and Columbia county farms. The line would cut a swath about 31 miles long and 150 feet wide through the farms crossed, plus require a network of “access roads” reaching each tower.

Traveling license examiners will no longer make stops at Pomeroy and other small towns across the state after June 30. After that it’s Colfax for new licenses: Colfax or Clarkston for renewals. Computerization seems to be the main culprit.

Mrs. Earl Kuhn, who became lost on a mushroom hunt in the Blue Mountains, was found safe after a four-hour ground and air search by 12 members of the sheriff’s posse, friends and relatives.

Ray McKeirnan drove to a third place finish last week at Lewiston in his newly acquired 1957 Chevrolet.

Seventy-Five Years Ago

June 13, 1946

Machinery and equipment for the Pomeroy Lumber Company is being installed on the company six-acre tract of land lying north of the Blue Mountain Canneries, Inc., plant. They expect to be sawing timber sometime next week.

The Ellis Whittaker sedan stolen from in front of the Sommerville club house Monday evening was found wrecked two miles west of Pomeroy with the individual who stole the automobile missing from the scene. While the car was badly damaged, no evidence could be found that the driver, and if he had an accomplice, were injured. Evidence led the officer to believe that the car rolled over at least once and then righted itself on its wheels.

One Hundred Years Ago

June 18, 1921

Between two and three thousand persons attended the twelfth annual meeting of the Garfield County Pioneer Association held in the city park Friday and Saturday. A spectacular feature of the parade was a pack train, following two bear cubs tied on the back of a horse.

Word was received Thursday morning that the Almota ferryboat had gone out and was landed after drifting four miles down the river. The ferry was bringing a load of horses across the river from Whitman County and was submerged by the waves of a steamboat just ahead. The horses swam out, the men staying with the boat.

One Hundred Twenty-Five Years Ago

June 13, 1896

The case of the State vs. Mathewson, charged with having conspired to wipe the Grandlands and others off the face of the earth, came up for trial in Justice Brown’s court Monday. When the testimony was all in for the prosecution, Attorney Gose moved to dismiss the case, taking the ground that the main witness, and the only one whose testimony could be strong enough to hold the defendant, was an accomplice in the plot, if a conspiracy had been formed as alleged by the complaint. The main witness was a woman of apparently easy virtue and her story was not given much credence. Mathewson was discharged and so the farce ended.

Thomas Carolan, who was arrested on the charge of stealing John Houser’s black carriage pony, and pleaded guilty to the crime, was sentenced by Judge Sturdevant to serve six years in the penitentiary. Carolan had just escaped from the clutches of the law in Lincoln County, where he had committed a crime similar to the one for which he was convicted here.

Ralph Melton, charged with making an assault on Alfred Halterman, with a deadly weapon, was found “not guilty” by the jury. The jury thought that the ends of justice would be met by the judge administering a reprimand to young Melton, owing partly, no doubt, to the extreme youth of the defendant. Much influence was brought to bear on his behalf.