Pomeroy Pioneer Portraits

Ten years ago

February 1, 2012

Pomeroy Elementary School fifth grader Makayla Miller was the winner of the Pomeroy Elementary Bee held January 5. Second place went to Danner Maves, a fourth grader, and sixth grader Devon Caruso placed third.

Blue Mountain Artisan Group will have a show during the entire month of February at Valley Art Center, 842 6th Street, Clarkston. Mary Flerchinger invited art fans to attend the reception and enjoy “a fun evening.” Refreshments served.

Twenty-five years ago

February 5, 1997

Joan K. Herres of Pomeroy is going from taking care of maybe a half-dozen little ones to over a thousand little ones. Through the encouragement of her brother John Herres, Joan K. is trying to move out of the child day-care business and into the upland game bird business. The Herreses own a ranch in Starbuck, between Pomeroy and Dayton, from which they sold the bottom land (“That’s the part that doesn’t blow into Garfield County,” Joan K. joked) but kept 687 acres of farmland that they bid into the Conservation Reserve Program.

Dave Price, District Ranger for the Pomeroy Ranger district since 1987, retired Jan. 3 to conclude a 35-year career with the U.S.F.S.

Fifty years ago

February 3, 1972

Residents of the Grouse Flats area–an isolated area of Washington and Oregon, southeast of the Pomeroy District, Umatilla National Forest, got along fine during the five days isolation from the outside world earlier this month. About ten families were cut off Jan. 20 when the approach to Wenatchee Creek Bridge was washed out near the confluence with the Grand Ronde River. A longer route through Troy, Flora and Enterprise, Ore., was drifted closed in places. That route was reopened a day later, but Grouse Flats residents couldn’t get to Asotin County via State Highway 129 until Tuesday of last week when the road was reopened to limited travel.

Economic losses in southeastern Washington because of the West Coast dock strike are reaching “staggering proportions” and will get worse, according to industry spokesman. Some have indicated Pacific Northwest farmers will never recover from the effects of the strike and the whole economy in the Northwest is being threatened. Millions of bushels of wheat not being exported to Japan and other countries may not have a market anywhere else, and the per-bushel of loss of wheat which is marketable is 20 to 22 cents a bushel, comparing this year’s prices to last year’s.

Seventy-five years ago

February 6, 1947

Some thoughtless person or non-compos mentis individual is jeopardizing the lives of motorists traveling on the highway between Pomeroy and Dodge, reports Hawley Huyette of the state highway department. For the past week, someone has been removing the red flags set out by the highway crew as warning signals to motorists, cautioning them of an approaching stretch of dangerous road; moving them to another section on the highway where no such signal is necessary. Not satisfied with this, they have also been removing all night flare torches placed on the highway to warn the motorists after dusk, transferring them elsewhere.

Automobile parking has become as much of a problem to Pomeroy as it has to many other localities, Double parking has, in fact, become such a menace and nuisance that the state highway patrol has served notice the practice must stop.

The fellow who wrote: Oh give me a home where the buffalo roam, must have prophetically foreseen this housing shortage situation.

One hundred years ago

February 4, 1922

Offenders who have been convicted of or have pleaded guilty to violations of the prohibition law in any court, or may do so, must hereafter in addition to any fines levied by the court, pay heavy taxes to the government for their operations in violation of the law. Word of such ruling was received at the office of H.S. McClure, federal prohibition enforcement agent in Spokane, yesterday from Roy C. Lyle, state director of prohibition.

There never was a time in the history of Garfield County when teamwork was more necessary than at present. Farmers and business men must pull together if we are to hold our present position of community importance to say nothing of gains.

The welfare of the entire county can properly be advanced only by the efforts of all the people pulling together. This is the principle employed by every community that hopes to promote any degree of progress.