Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
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Approximately 90 people attended the 75 year anniversary dinner for the Rosalia Fire Department June 4. Retired and current firefighters, commissioners and their guests joined at the Rosalia fire station for dinner and stories of events and people, past and present. The Rosalia Fire Department was officially founded in 1936 and has served the city of Rosalia and the surrounding areas since. Emcee for the evening was Bill Widman and keynote speakers were Bill Tenesfeld, Steve VanDyke and Dr. Tom Coombs. New fire department patches designed in...
Bryson Aase, a member of the Colfax Police Department for five years, has resigned to join the Whitman County Sheriff’s department. Aase’s resignation leaves the Colfax department with two vacancies, but Chief Bill Hickman told the city council he will expand the hiring process, which has been underway since the resignation of Robert Wride, to hire two new members of the department. Wride resigned to join the city crew. Hickman told the city council he hopes to advance a nomination list for hiring late this week....
Glenn Martin, 54, LaCrosse, was taken by Washtucna ambulance to Whitman Hospital Monday morning after he hit a deer while riding a motorcycle on Highway 26. Martin was riding to Washtucna where he serves as school principal. According to the Washington State Patrol report out of Ritzville, Martin was riding the Suzuki VZ 800 westbound at about 8:30 a.m. when the deer ran into the path of the motorcycle about three miles east of Washtucna on Highway 26. Martin sustained a leg fracture, fractured ribs and numerous abrasions. He remained in the... Full story
Earl’s Girls, the can-can troupe which was one of the acts that eventually became part of the Slippery Gulch Shows in Tekoa, made a return engagement at Tekoa Saturday when they appeared as the Grand Marshals in the parade. Earl’s Girls was formed in 1961 and was originally a troupe which performed their can-can dance in the parish hall and later on the street several times during the big day. The late Earl Rawlings who operated the Shell Service Station in Tekoa, provided a truck to transport the girls in the Slippery Gulch parade and sor... Full story
Now that summer’s here, school’s out and you have free time on your hands, how do you plan to spend it? Where do you like to camp? "We go up to Priest Lake a lot" - Michala Teale, Colfax - - Lauren Slayton, Colfax - What do you like to do for fun? "Play video games, go to the pool. Just waste time." - Casey Martin, Colfax - - Emily Slayton, Colfax -...
What to Do at the Airport for 10 Hours W. BRUCE CAMERON When I show up at the airport two hours before my flight, I am unaware that my arrival will be the only on-time part of the trip. Security has changed from the days when they would ask you at the counter if anyone you “didn’t know” asked you to “carry something” on the flight and “light the fuse.” Now, they instruct you to take off your belt to see if your pants fall off in a suspicious fashion, remove your shoes so your socks can be inspected for terrorist slogans and take off your “out...
Disposition for the 15-year-old Colton High student who was charged with selling a prescription drug to other students at school was deferred for six months. The youth pleaded guilty in juvenile court Thursday, June 16, to one count of delivery of a controlled substance. The arrest report said the youth sold pills which were from an expired prescription which he brought from home. A deputy was called to investigate after a school official observed unusual behavior among students at school. At least four students admitted they purchased pills....
Gazette Reporter A sign with a brief description of the history of Elberton was recently erected in the former town, which is now a county park along the North Fork of the Palouse River. Park board member Dennis Cartwright of Elberton installed the sign June 6. At the June 9 park board meeting, he shared a picture of the new sign with park board members. Cartwright lives in Elberton and has sat on the park board for the past five years. The area has been without a sign for almost 10 years. A portion of the sign reads as follows: “In the 1... Full story
More than 5,137 acres of Whitman County land was accepted into the federal Conservation Reserve Program under the signup for general CRP held this spring. Kathy Wolfe, director of the Whitman County office of the United States Department of Agriculture’s Farm Service Agency, said only 1,274 of the 5,137 acres accepted were new enrollments. The remaining 3,862.9 acres was ground already enrolled in CRP contracts that are set to expire this October. All of the contracts awarded this spring were in the General CRP program. General CRP accounts f... Full story
Property rights My case against Whitman County is a property rights case. Does surrounding a residential property with an industrial wind turbine development decrease the value of the residential property? Does placing one (or in my case eight) industrial wind turbines within 3,500 feet of a residential property create a health threat? (At First Wind’s Mars Hill, Maine project, of the people who live within 3,500 feet of the turbines 82 percent of exposed subjects reported new or worsened chronic sleep deprivation, versus 4 percent in the n...
Under siege from the unchecked bureaucracy Partisan wrangling in Congress over the federal deficit and government spending has created gridlock. Not much else is getting done. Into that void have stepped federal bureaucrats who are circumventing Congress to implement sweeping policy changes. With President Obama’s legislative initiatives stalled in Congress, his appointed agency directors are finding ways to implement his programs without congressional approval. These aren’t penny-ante changes some programs carry trillion-dollar price tag... Full story
Congratulations! You’re in debt Amid all the uplifting cliches at their commencement ceremonies, graduating college students won’t hear a line applicable to some of them — you got ripped off. Student debt just surpassed the country’s credit-card debt for the first time. It is projected to top $1 trillion this year, according to The New York Times, when it was less than $200 billion in 2000. For the class of 2011, the mean student debt burden is nearly $23,000, up 8 percent from a year ago. Colleges appropriate tuition dollars from America... Full story
#!*! No one has to give you a gift, but the least you can do is thank them for it. Political statements pertaining to local issues and campaigns need to be signed. Also self-promoting statements and personal exaltations over family members are not appropriate. Send your Pet Peeves and Okeydokes to the Gazette P.O. Box 770 Colfax, WA 99111 or bring them by the office... Full story
The Port of Whitman County will give a grant to LaCrosse Community Pride, the organization dedicated to bringing a new grocery store and other businesses to the town. The grant is something new for the port. There is no required repayment, and it may be used to finish out the project without any specific demands as to how and when it is used. More than that, the port is formalizing a grant program that will give it the authority to approve future grants of the same nature. At one point in its history the port was criticized for sitting on untou...
McDonald Park in Colfax will host a four-day run of baseball games for this week's edition of the Palouse Summer Series. The event will feature 20 teams who will compete in Colfax and Pullman. Pullman Patriots, the local Legion team, will be among the entries. They play at Colfax Saturday at 2:15 p.m. Action will start at Colfax today, Thursday, with games at 12:15 p.m., 3 p.m., 5:45 p.m., and 8:30 p.m. All involve westside teams. Action continues Friday and Saturday. One of the tourney semi-final games will be played at Colfax Sunday. Other... Full story
Rosalia was awarded a $542,100 grant from the state Department of Commerce this week to renovate and upgrade its wastewater system. Mayor Jim Stenhouse said the funding will be combined with funding previously acquired by the town to begin a $1.2 million complete overhaul of the town’s wastewater facilities. The funding comes from the Community Development Block Grant program. Rosalia was one of 18 cities and counties in the state to receive the grant. The Department of Commerce awarded $13 million. Work will include new pumps, a new lift s...
Rendezvous will mark 20th Palouse Hills Muzzle loaders will celebrate the 20th year for their rendezvous this weekend, June 24-25-26, along the Palouse River north of Colfax at Manning. The club started in 1991 with eight members and they now have 33 members. Among competitions will be rifle and pistol shooting, hawk and knife throwing , and Dutch oven cooking . Old time music will be played late Saturday evening and Saturday night. Visitors to the rendezvous are welcome. To get to the rendezvous take the Green Hollow road north from Colfax and...
Heavy rainfall at LaCrosse made for a great day of racing in the Farmers’ Fest Mud Bog Saturday afternoon, as the suped-up machines of mud warriors flung muck across the west Palouse sky. Massive trucks ran side-by-side through inches of soggy slop in the Mud Bog field on Scott Road to vie for the best time as the roar of their engines filled echoed into downtown. Hometown racer Trevor Bennett topped the field in the stock class drag races, while Nick Lecraft of Kahlotus was best in the Super Stock class. Gary Fleming of LaCrosse won the s...
Colfax girls battled back through the consolation round to win the Palouse Empire Senior Girls softball tournament at Pullman over the weekend. The Bulldogs were defeated by Troy in the semi-final round, but came back to face the Idaho club in the finals after defeating Colton. Colton was dropped by Troy in the quarter-finals, but stopped the Moscow Red team to face Colfax in the consolation final. After stopping Colton, the Colfax club needed to notch two wins to claim the title in the final rounds. Troy went into the final round 3-0...
Spokane Blue Devils defeated the Pullman Patriots twice in Spokane Tuesday night to start the third week of Spokane Legion action for the locals. The pair of losses in Spokane stretched the Pats’ string of league defeats to six. The Patriots were tagged for five errors in each of the two Tuesday games. The Blue Devils took the first game 16-5 over five innings. They mixed in 10 hits, led 8-0 after three innings and added eight more in the bottom of the fourth. Nick Sourey started for the Pats, and Matt Peterson relieved him in the fourth. The s...
Despite frigid winds and driving rain, Webb’s Slough at St. John was packed for another Saturday of high-powered sprint boat racing Saturday. “It was hard to see a thing with the rain just covering my face,” said racer Scott Ackerman of Colfax. “It was just miserable out there.” Racers huddled under blankets in the pit between races while fans on the terraced seating area above the track wrapped themselves in blankets, jackets and anything else they could to stay warm. The line at the coffee stand was by far the longest in the slough. T...
THURSDAY Representative Anthony Weiner, 46, a New York City congressman, ensnared in a humiliating flap for sending lewd photos of himself to women online, resigned, ending a weeks-long scandal that made his fellow Democrats cringe. A climber attempting to reach the 14,410-foot peak of Mount Rainier was overcome by hypothermia and slid 2,000 feet into a treacherous “icefall” area to his death. A black mamba, widely considered the world’s most poisonous snake, was suspected in the death of a woman who kept 75 snakes as pets at her subur...
Colfax City council member Jeannette Solimine, a volunteer with the FISH food bank, reported at Monday's city council session the stocks at the food pantry are very low. She noted now is the time of year when demand on the food bank increases because the start of summer marks an end to school breakfast and lunch meal programs. The food bank serves many working poor and fixed income households. Friends In Service of Humanity food pantry is stocked by donations from individuals, churches, and businesses. “Most of us don’t think about the nee...
Theft of copper wire at Clearwater Power substations at Wilma and Anatone have involved cut locks and entry into the station grounds. The person or persons committing the thefts is putting themselves in extreme danger inside the substations, Bob Pierce, member service manager for Clearwater Power, said in a report. He also noted the Clearwater crew members, who might initially be unaware of the missing ground wire at a sub-station, could be endangered. A small amount of copper ground wire was cut off at each substation and taken. The Whitman... Full story
Erina McGuckin has opened a counseling office in Oakesdale offering trauma counseling for children, adolescents and adults. Her office, La Bramasole, is located in the former Root 66 Studios office on Steptoe Avenue. “There are a lot of studies out that show adults who have traumatic experiences in their past have approximately a 60 to 70 percent chance of being diagnosed with trauma,” McGuckin said. McGuckin moved her practice to Oakesdale from Rosalia after the building in which she kept her office there closed. She has a B.A. in psychology f...
