Pomeroy Pioneer Portraits

Ten years ago

June 6, 2012

Puget Sound Energy president Kimberly Harris was in Pomeroy last week Wednesday and spoke at the lunch provided by PSE to celebrate completion of the Lower Snake River Wind Facility. The 149 turbines went on the grid at the end of February. Harris thanked the community and the Garfield County Board of Commissioners for their cooperation in implementing the project that, combined with the Hopkins Ridge Wind Facility in Columbia County, comprise the largest wind turbine facility in the state.

The third annual Wine, Stein & Shine car show sponsored by Pomeroy Chamber of Commerce and Pomeroy Community Center for the Tumbleweed Festival will put a lot of chrome and shiny paint on 7th and Columbia streets Friday, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The past two shows have drawn owners and vehicles from Idaho and Oregon as well as the nearby areas.

Twenty-five years ago

June 11, 1997

Blue Mountain Estates, billed as “Pomeroy’s own retirement community”, will hold an open house Saturday, June 14, and Sunday, June 15, at its 11th and Main St. location. There are 10 units in phase 1, scheduled for completion at the end of June. Dotty Van Vogt said visitors will notice that trim work hasn’t been finished. “Construction isn’t complete,” she said, so not every unit will be open. Some units are already occupied and won’t be available to visitors. Van Vogt said the open house was a “sneak preview” of the building, which will eventually have 22 suites for senior adults age 55 and over. There are studio, one-bedroom and two-bedroom units available, all self-contained. Units are handicap accessible.

Want to see 50 tons of books in one place in Pomeroy? No, they aren’t at the schools or the library. They’re at Health Research, a book publishing company owned by Nikki Jones and Ben Roberts of Pomeroy and operated out of the former Masonic Lodge building just south of City Hall. And residents and visitors will actually have the opportunity to see the 50 tons of publications on Saturday, June 14, when the company is open for tours at 11:30 a.m. and again at 12:30 p.m.

Fifty years ago

June 8, 1972

Pomeroy’s Ray McKeirnan swept the Limited Superstock Division at Umatilla last weekend following a five-day rebuilding job of the “McKeirnan Special”. McKeirnan moved into first place in the standings at Umatilla with wins in his heat race, trophy dash and main event. Less than a week earlier the car was inoperable following an earlier crash at Spokane’s fairgrounds race track. McKeirnan lauded his pit crew, Kenny Ramm, chief mechanic, Larry Bunch, Jim Crawford, John Byers, and Hank McKeirnan, for the excellent job of rebuilding the car. The job was finished enough Saturday night to take the car to Umatilla, and it was finished up about ten minutes before time trials.

Employment at Lower Granite Dam has topped 1,000 in recent weeks, according to Tom Mendiola, Army Corps of Engineers resident engineer at Lower Granite Dam. Mendiola, speaking before a group of journalists at Lewiston June 1, said employment at the dam May 30 was 1,050, plus the 68 people at the Lower Snake River resident office. The dam is now nearly two-thirds complete-at the 65 per cent point last week. He noted concrete placement-1,290,000 yards-was 76 per cent complete. The whole project, including levees at Lewiston, is 42 per cent complete.

Seventy-five years ago

June 12, 1947

Harry Wheeler, a Nez Perce Indian of Stites, Idaho, demonstrated to members of the Kiwanis Club Monday how Indian clubs should be properly handled. Through a given routine, Mr. Wheeler swung the clubs with ease, every movement of the body in relation to the clubs displaying grace and perfect timing. As a student at Carlisle, he taught Indian youths how to correctly swing the clubs.

Work on the new $350,000 highway between Pomeroy and Dodge was started Monday by J.D. Shotwell of Tacoma, who has the contract for rebuilding the 12.38 miles of primary state highway located in Garfield County. Equipment to be used on the job began to arrive last week and most of it is now on the ground. Construction work was started at Dodge and will be pushed forward to completion towards Pomeroy. Tuesday, 400 boxes of dynamite, weighing 50 pounds each, 10 tons, arrived on an Inland Motor Freight truck from Tacoma and was stored in the county powder house located near the city dump ground. This amount of dynamite will be used to jar loose 25,410 yards of solid rock that must be removed from the right of way before the job can be finished.

One hundred years ago

June 10, 1922

Far-reaching improvement in the methods of treating seed wheat for smut is among the big questions under discussion by county farm agents and agricultural college extension representatives. They were in conference yesterday afternoon at the Spokane hotel. “A dry treatment of seed wheat with copper carbonate dust, with which the experimental department has been working, promises great improvements in present methods of fighting smut,” said R.M. Turner, assistant county agent leader from Pullman. “The treatment by formaldehyde and blue stone has, as every farmer knows, resulted in seed being impaired from 20 to 60 per cent, with an average of about 45 per cent. This impairment has been clearly shown by samples taken from seed after it had been treated and germinated on more than 50 farms in Whitman County.”

V.H. Moon, manager of the Pacific Power & Light company, says the work of extending the line to Pataha will be completed by the middle of July. Mr. Moon says this extension will be as substantial as the rest of the line. Thirty-five-foot cedar poles will be set and arrangements made to operate at a pressure of 2,300 volts, with facilities to increase to 6,600, at any time the business may justify. The line follows the general course of the highway, leaving it for a short distance only at the Gimlin place, where there is a curve of the road. The citizens of Pataha are very anxious to get this line through and a number have volunteered to contribute labor.