Pomeroy Pioneer Portraits

Ten Years Ago

June 22, 2011

A re-dedication ceremony and reception for the Garfield County Courthouse, after a year-long renovation project, will be held on June 24.

Garfield County Hospital District will again sponsor the annual Fourth of July Celebration in the city park, with a parade, food vendors, kids’ games, a pie-eating contest and Bingo, plus free swimming at the pool.

Twenty-Five Years Ago

June, 26, 1996

Dave Howell, a 1971 graduate of Pomeroy High School and who ran an aerial spraying business based in Garfield County, died last Thursday when his single-engine plane crashed into Volcano Hill just east of the city. The crash occurred 30 yards from the top of the hill and about 150 yards from the landing strip. The cause is still undetermined.

Siblings Brandi and Cameron Mulrony have qualified to attend the Silver State International Rodeo in Fallon, Nev., in July. Brandi qualified in goat-tying and Cameron in bareback riding.

Fifty Years Ago

June 24, 1971

Alan Zander, son of Mr. and Mrs. Neil Zander, completed a 110-mile bicycle trip Monday evening, cycling from Pomeroy to Pendleton. The trip took 11½ hours. He was blown off the road once by a truck and had one flat tire, but still made good time.

Fire observers took their summer posts at lookouts in the Pomeroy District of the Umatilla National Forest Monday and spotted two fires that apparently developed from a lightning storm. The blazes were started between heavy rainfalls in the district forest while the woods were still green from a damp spring. Forestry crews put out one fire but were still looking for a small one that was smoking about 15 miles southeast of Dayton.

State Senator Hubert F. Donahue contacted the Department of Motor Vehicles regarding its decision to drop traveling license examiners, stating the policy will “cause a great hardship for the elderly and for those who can only take a few minutes from their employment to secure a new or renewal driver’s license. In my district this means being forced to travel 80 to 120 miles to keep current when a license is about to expire.”

Seventy-Five Years Ago

June 20, 1946

Captain Pat McKeirnan, a Transcontinental Western Airways pilot, arrived in Clarkston last Thursday, in his own plane, a former army AT-6, where he was met by his father. Before landing he circled above Pomeroy for several minutes about noon to inform his parents that he had arrived from Kansas City, flying west from that point in nine hours.

Approximately 125 4-H club boys and girls are in attendance at the club camp being held at the Hidden Valley institute, on the Tucannon river, which formerly housed a CCC camp.

The county road department will resurface the Pataha grade road east of town with 3,200 yards of crushed stone at a total cost of $6,000 for the project.

One Hundred Years Ago

June 18, 1921

Aided by the civic club, the City Council has bought the Cosgrove spring acreage and the block east of the athletic grounds. The club will pay $3,000 of the cost while the city is to pay $1,000. Mr. Cosgrove reserves the right to tap the spring with a half-inch pipe. Added to the present park and athletic grounds this affords adequate space to accommodate all civic requirements for a playground and also take care of the great increase in tourist travel predicted to come with the national movement over the Roosevelt highway.

The Grouse picnic is reported as a big success. A fine dinner was served on the Hilroy Todd place with more kinds of cake served than some of the guests ever saw, fried chicken, home-cured ham, ice cream and other good things too numerous to mention, enough to feed an army. Considerable amusement was provided by a couple of black bears about the size of cats that wrestled with each other and the guests until dinner was served after which neither they nor the guests could wrestle.

One Hundred Twenty-Five Years Ago

June 20, 1896

Pomeroy will not celebrate. A citizen’s committee appointed to raise money for the purpose of getting up “the best celebration ever held in Pomeroy” couldn’t raise the money and has decided that Pomeroy can’t get up spirit enough to observe the day. So we will have to go to Peola, Mayview, Tucannon or Starbuck.

Peola boys are going to work on the racetrack at the Grove. The track will be in good shape this year.

E.V. Kuykendall is to be the orator at Peola and Garrie Jewett will speak at Starbuck. M.G. Gose will deliver the oration at Mayview, where a dancing floor will be on the ground for those who want to dance. Large crowds and grand good times are anticipated.

By actual count, over 300 people were present at the Grove on Children’s Day at Mayview. After the program prepared by Mrs. Mary Wills, eighty children, with a few older ones, took part in the grand march of 200 yards to the table where all had spread their dinner of which there was an abundance and to spare. Many were present from Gould City, Ilia, Offield Bar, Kluge’s Bar and Kirby schoolhouse.