Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
Sorted by date Results 901 - 925 of 2119
The St. John/Endicott/LaCrosse football team began their 2017 season with a scoring drive. Dustin Fox got loose on a 35-yard breakaway run to the Tekoa-Rosalia 12-yard line. On the next play, quarterback Trey Fleming threw to Fox in the end zone. The ball was tipped, and Fox came down with it. Touchdown S.J.E.L, 6-0. After a failed point-after-attempt and kickoff, Tekoa-Rosalia lined up for their first play from scrimmage. They ran the ball straight up the middle for a touchdown. The Timberwolve...
Garfield/Palouse opened their 2017 high school football season Sept. 1 with 32-8 home win over non-league Troy. Quarterback Evan Weagraff led the team, rushing for 173 yards on 24 carries and four touchdowns. He also went 7-for-8 passing for 118 yards. The game opened with a 0-0 tie in the first quarter before the Vikings scored early in the second. Troy’s defense held Gar/Pal to a longest-run-of-the-night of 23 yards. In turn, Palouse wound time off the clock in extended drives. They led 1...
Michael Heitstuman, a 2016 University of Idaho graduate with a degree in ag education, joins the Colfax schools as the new FFA instructor after a year at Pasco High School. He started here Aug. 1 and drove with Supt. Jerry Pugh and Colfax High School Principal Carrie Lipe in a district pickup to weigh students’ animals on the district’s new scale. He met many students for the first time this way. Weigh-ins for fair animals were done to be sure they reached a minimum weight. Heitstuman will ove...
New directors are in place for the county’s Parks and Developmental Disability Services departments. Dave Mahan, a nine-year ranger/operations coordinator for the county, took over Sept. 1 as parks superintendent from interim director Janel Goebel. Goebel was named county coordinator of developmental disability services June 1. Both new positions will be overseen by Bill Tensfeld, director of emergency management, who will now act as director for Parks, Developmental Disability Services, E...
The possible tear-down of Uniontown’s “pigeon house” is on hold as the town awaits review of a bid by Roach Construction of Genesee. Originally bidding $7,500 in 2014, the town approached the company again in July to ask if they would re-evaluate it and re-submit for 2017. Representatives of Roach came to Uniontown last week and met with town Building Inspector Brent Lane. The town now awaits word. Once it arrives, Uniontown Clerk-Treasurer Lynda Devorak will contact the pigeon house prope...
A smoky haze settles in north of Colfax Sept. 3. The Whitman County Health Department advises residents to beware of poor air quality due to smoke from fires in neighboring Latah County, Montana, British Columbia and the Washington and Oregon Cascades. “We’re between red and purple,” Troy Henderson, Public health director, reported to county commissioners Tuesday morning, referring to coded ratings used by the Washington State Department of Ecology. “Red is bad, purple is worse.” Red is termed...
They are not young anymore. The Garfield/Palouse High School football team returns for 2017 with a group of nine juniors who played as underclassmen in 2016 on a roster of only two seniors. One of them was four-year starter Mason Bates and the other tailback Cameron Springstead. To replace them, the Vikings will move Daniel Orfe, a junior returning to football, to starting tailback. Ely Hawkins, last year’s bruising runner in place of the injured Springstead, will move to tight end. Behind c...
“We're looking straight up Alder Street now,” said Mark Hellinger, pictured. Hellinger and wife Liz petitioned the Town of Farmington to sell a group of plotted, but unused, streets and alleys in Farmington. The Town of Farmington approved a sale of alley, unopened alley and unopened streets in what is known as the Truax Addition and Sheehan's Addition at its Aug. 14 town council meeting. For a price of 50 cents per square foot, the town council approved the sale to Mark and Liz Hellinger, who...
Marcy Goossen pauses from cutting a batch of caramels Tuesday in her downstairs commercial kitchen. What started as an added item at the Farmer's Market in Rockford is now a commercial product made in Farmington. Marcy Goossen, who moved to Farmington two years ago, sells Buttercup & Blossoms caramels around northeast Washington and Idaho. The operation reached another level in July when she and husband Rudy added a commercial kitchen to their house. Marcy and her daughter, Hannah, a part-time...
The City of Palouse has approved another free audit of its city energy use by a company that conducted a previous audit in 2015 that led to installation of Palouse’s solar farm. Apollo Solutions of Spokane approached the city again in July to ask about looking into other potential energy-saving projects in Palouse. Representatives from Apollo will return this fall and look at the systems at the wastewater treatment plant, exterior and interior lights in city-owned buildings, wells, the fire stat...
Whitman County commissioners Monday formally approved the second two-year contract for the Voluntary Stewardship Program (VSP) for $220,000, effective July 1, 2017-June 30, 2019. The contract is similar to the original, which created the watershed work group that aims to protect agricultural activity while also preserving wetlands, flood plains, animal habitat, aquifer recharge and geologically hazardous areas. The new funding will cover the implementation of a plan created in the past two...
Arthur Stone of North Plainfield, N.J., watches the fields Aug. 15. On a dusty road in the foreground of Kamiak Butte, a rental car sat parked, its silver trunk open in the sun. Just off the front bumper, a man sat in a fold-out camp chair. He looked into the distance at wheat fields and a section of a garbanzo field, listening for the sound of combines. He flew 2,100 miles for the experience. Arthur Stone of North Plainfield, N.J., came to the Palouse Aug. 14 for the second time to view...
Adjustments and some new features will greet students Tuesday at the start of the new school year in Colfax. A junior high counseling office has been moved to the upper floor and some classrooms have been rearranged to create an area specifically for the junior high. Seventh-graders will arrive this year to a “Bulldog Basecamp,” similar to a homeroom which will be where Kelli Cox will teach English and science. Cox is part of a designated core group of junior high teachers who will share the...
Whitman County Public Works crews last week installed a fish passage channel after resuming work on a bridge project on Steptoe Canyon Road. The project had been stopped after ash from a possible indigenous campfire was discovered at the site. The ash was evaluated by the Nez Perce Tribe and Army Corps of Engineers, and the county received approval to bury it and proceed with the bridge project. “Don’t touch it, don’t remove it,” Public Works Director Mark Storey said as he explained the sta...
Have you heard of Paul Millsap? As of September, he’ll be making $30 million per year. Are you certain you can’t place the name? “I know it when I see it.” That was Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart’s famous description of when art crossed the line into pornography. Paul Millsap may be the new definition for when American capitalism crosses its own line. In the realm of whether capitalism should have any limits in this country, it’s hard to quantify. After all, money is often a shorthand f...
A committee report in the hands of Tekoa's city attorney may push the saga of the collapsed former Cohn Motor Co. building to another stage after part of its roof caved in under snow in January. The unfit building committee, consisting of three volunteers appointed by Mayor John Jaeger – who chose the first three who came forward, to not appear biased – began work in late July. Referring to the city's unfit dwellings code, they finalized their report last week and sent it to the city. If the...
The planned final two stretches of the four-part Almota Road reconstruction project set for 2018 and 2019 will have a new twist as wetlands have been designated along the route. The categorization was made two weeks ago after a consultant joined county public works for the design and planning process. The category-four, upland wetland area extending 300 feet long by 25 feet wide along Penawawa Creek, just south of Stevick Road, runs right where plans are set for the expanded road. The creek...
Combines roll to a field to continue harvest near Kamiak Butte Monday. Whitman County grows 26 percent of Washington’s annual wheat crop. Harvest 2017 is at its halfway point and the numbers coming from area grain elevators to the United States Department of Agriculture are looking good. The USDA’s projections for Washington state wheat as of Aug. 10 show an overall prediction for the year at 141 million bushels, down from a near-record 157 million in 2016. The five-year average is 133 mil...
Vacant for 10 years, this abandoned house was the subject of a $7,500 demolition bid in 2014. An abandoned house behind Uniontown's town hall was expected to be discussed at the town council meeting Wednesday as the town's former building inspector looks to address the “pigeon house.” Vacant for more than 10 years, its owner, Margaret Huggins, has listed it for sale in the past. “Their asking price was way out of line for property in Uniontown,” said Marv Entel, former building inspect...
Greg Herron and fiancé Jules Webb stand at the new 1930s replica gas pumps in Steptoe which Herron installed in July. On a hazy, smoke-tinged evening last Friday, a motorcycle pulled into Steptoe. The rider parked at a gas station on the corner, two Phillips 66 pumps gleaming at the island, radio heard from the repair bay. The man ambled over to two people sitting out front. He asked if they had seen another rider, relayed some banter about the guy's phone not working and asked how cell...
The project to replace a culvert with a new bridge on Steptoe Canyon Road south of Colton has been stopped while the Whitman County Public Works Department awaits clearance from archaeologists from the Nez Perce Tribe and Palouse Conservation District. A county crew prepared to take out the culvert July 27 when archaeologists discovered ash which may mark a fire from indigenous people to the area. The development put a halt on the project until archaeologists submit their report to the...
—Misty Zornacki photo A view from Union Flat Creek as the sun, turned red by smoke which has invaded the area, sets. The Whitman County Health Department advises people with respiratory conditions to be aware of changing air quality this week due to wildfires in British Columbia. Wheat dust from harvest on the Palouse also contributes to the haze in the air. As of late Tuesday morning, the Washington State Department of Ecology air quality rating in Pullman and LaCrosse stood at level three (...
Whitman County's Public Works department had to adjust the operation of the solid waste transfer station in the past three weeks due to a lightning strike July 15 that burned out electronics, including the commercial scale and two others. On the early Saturday morning that lightning hit, David Nails, County Solid Waste operations manager, arrived to cover a shift and found that three of the four scales were out. An older, non-digital one in the residential dumping section still worked....
Volunteers serve lunch from behind the counter at the former Albion school Tuesday. From left to right, they are Sammy Gallagher, a young helper, Mary Collins and Rhonda Anderson. A new summer lunch program for kids in Albion has passed its midpoint. Organized to run 10 weeks, starting June 19, the program offers sack lunches for any kid enrolled in school, for no charge. The program is funded by donations. “Money, time and product,” said Starr Cathey, Albion town clerk/treasurer who was ins...
Shareholders for the Tekoa Medical Foundation, Inc., are seeking any claims to it before they dissolve the group, which was formed in 1968 to build the Tekoa Care Center and Retirement Apartments. The facility was sold two years ago. In April, a shareholders' meeting was called to vote on whether to dissolve. A total of 157 people voted to do so, by unanimous count. “They haven't operated in a couple years and feel it is prudent to dissolve at this time,” said Timothy Esser, attorney for the cor...
