Pomeroy Pioneer Portraits

Ten years ago

January 18, 2012

The Pacific Power Foundation has awarded a $5,000 grant to the Eastern Washington Agricultural Museum (EWAM) to help support the construction of a critically needed building at the Garfield County Fairgrounds. The museum has been preserving the history of agriculture in the northwest since its inception. The EWAM committee has been receiving, restoring historical farm equipment and has simply run out of room in the existing building.

Pomeroy Chamber of Commerce is accepting bids for catering for its Annual Awards Banquet. This year’s Banquet has a Hawaiian Luau theme and will be hosted Saturday, March 10, at 6 p.m. according to chamber director Stephanie Newberg.

Twenty-five years ago

January 22, 1997

Angie Gates, Pomeroy High School’s 1996-97 Junior Miss, is in Pullman this week for the Washington state program at Beasley Coliseum. Forty-two participants from across the state will compete for more than $10,000 in scholarships in the programs Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights. Angie, the daughter of John and Barb Gates of Pomeroy, will perform a ballet she choreographed to the song “Music Box Dancer”.

Pomeroy High School Drama Club will present the play “Deadly Deal” on Wednesday January 29, and Thursday, January 30, 7 p.m. each night, in the high school cafetorium. The play revolves around the murder of Charles Lansing, a devious millionaire with lots of enemies, and the detectives who try to solve the mystery. The two-act play features question-and-answer audience participation between the acts.

Fifty years ago

January 20, 1972

Friends, neighbors and employees banded together last week at Dye Seed Ranch to replace over 1000 feet of roofing, roof purlins and bin walls lost to a strange siphoning wind blast during the wind storm Tuesday, January 11. The massive project was completed last Saturday morning, only four days after the storm.

Under the federal government’s Occupational and Health Act of 1970, slow moving vehicles (SMV) driven by employee-operators must be equipped with the yellow-orange, red-bordered SMV emblem. Washington state is one of the 30 states now having laws regulating the use of the SMV emblem, in addition to the federal law. An SMV is defined as one allowed to use highways but designed to travel no faster than 25 miles per hour.

Seventy-five years ago

January 23, 1947

Washington agricultural experiment station and the crop improvement association are releasing for the first time a new wheat variety for eastern Washington. The variety is called Marfed. It has a smooth white chaff with a beardless head. It grows slightly shorter than, and is equal to Federation in strength of straw. Marfed is a soft white wheat of good quality and is acceptable to the milling industry.

Mr. and Mrs. N.O. Baldwin, former Garfield County residents, and pioneers of this area will celebrate their 60th Wedding anniversary in Seattle, Sunday, January 26, 1947.

One hundred years ago

January 21, 1922

The plan for paving Fourth street between Columbia and Arlington has been modified to the surfacing of this section of street with crushed rock, and the work is in progress. City Engineer Tupper is quoted as saying that that part adjoining the Methodist church property will cost not to exceed $120 for the 240 feet to be improved. The width will be 24 feet.

The navy has been launching airplanes from the decks of battleships for several years, but it has hitherto been necessary always to maneuver the battleship so as to launch the airplane directly into the wind. This would be impossible in actual battle. So the Navy has developed a system whereby an airplane may be catapulted into the wind.