Pioneer Portraits

Ten Years Ago

July 7, 2011

[Photo caption] Alex the Clown rides atop the elephants during Thursday evening’s show of the Carson & Barnes circus on the outskirts of Dayton.

When Imbert Matthee bought the Times in fall of 2009, the Dutch immigrant was as excited about owning two Main Street buildings as he was about having his own newspaper after a long career as a daily news reporter, editor and columnist. Coffee and an occasional French-syle pastry being his favorite and only breakfast, Matthee said he can’t wait for Coppei Coffee’s door to open. “I’ll finally feel completely at home,” he said.

Former Waitsburg resident Adam Hermanns was sentenced late last week to five months in Walla Walla County Jail as part of the first of several cases against him in Superior court.

Twenty-Five Years Ago

June 2, 1995

Waitsburg doubled the amount of chlorine in the city’s drinking water on Monday, June 19, after rain water got into a spring supplying some of the town’s water.

[Photo caption] John Mason of Waitsburg, gets high fives from Waitsburg Grocery, Inc. softball teammates Dan Cole, and Kevin Corn for slamming a home run during the game Saturday at Waitsburg Lions Club Softball Bash at the fairgrounds in Waitsburg.The 11th annual event drew a pretty good crowd during the weekend of top-notch softball despite wet and threatening weather.

It might be summer, but someone forgot to tell the weather man. On Monday, June 19, Ski Bluewood was in a blizzard. The temperature dropped down to the 30s and the ski lodge in the Blue Mountains above Dayton received about an inch of snow.

Fifty Years Ago

July 2, 1970

Sharon Coufal of Waitsburg was injured in a motorcycle accident in Walla Walla at 12:14 a.m. Wednesday. She was riding with James S. Goulette eastbound on Main Street when the vehicle failed to make the turn going onto Isaacs and struck a curb. Both riders suffered scratches and bruises, and were held overnight in Walla Walla General Hospital for observation.

Prescott PTA has a fireworks stand just west of Prescott near the school grounds, proceeds from the sale are earmarked for the PTA scholarship fund. The stand is open from 10 a.m. to 8:30 p.m.

[Photo caption] Jill McConnell sports one of the fancier sun bonnets seen at Fishhook Park during the recent Sunday picnic.

Recycling of materials now discarded as waste is advocated as a practical solution to pollution as well as conservation of dwindling natural resources by a Northwest engineering authority. “The earth is not a bottomless cookie jar on the one hand and a garbage pit on the other. The ‘goodies’ are going down and the pit is filling up,” Austin Evanson declares in a technical article.

Seventy-Five Years Ago

July 6, 1945

Wage ceilings for harvest labor on wheat and dry pea farms in several Southwest Washington counties have been set from $10 a day with board to $20 with board effective June 18, WFA announces.

Miss Kathleen McCaw of Prescott became the bride of Lt. Russell Bergevin at St. Patrick’s Church in Walla Walla on July 3rd.

W. B. Hallaway of Huntsville has sold his acreage to Rev. Harry Anderson, Waitsburg. Morrison Groom is renting the place.

One Hundred Years Ago

July 9, 1920

It costs wheat farmers of Walla Walla County $2.15 to grow and market every bushel of grain they harvest if cost conditions here average up with conditions found on 481 wheat farms in the United States.

Mason C. McCoy, now a retired farmer, has been working for the past fifteen years to perfect a practical formula for the eradication of smut heads in wheat and barley. He now announces that he has been successful after having tested out his chemicals for several years on experimental plots of wheat.

Walter Price and family arrived home last Friday from a couple of weeks’ auto trip to Yakima, Spokane, Wenatchee, and other points in this state. They have come to the conclusion the Walla Walla Valley is the only real wheat country in the Inland Empire.

One Hundred Twenty-Five Years Ago

July 12, 1895

John and Isaac Neace will next week go to Montana with a train load of steers which they will put on the range there to be marketed in the fall. They will load their cattle at Harrington.

George Lloyd’s house fell down with him in it again last Monday and re-broke his shoulder which will force him to take another lay-off of almost a month.

The heavy wind on Thursday afternoon blew the awning down on the front of the Times office and in falling one of the large front windows was somewhat demolished. But we came from Missouri, and know how to stuff old rags and pillows into such places.