Serving Whitman County since 1877
Serving Whitman County since 1877
Sorted by date Results 26 - 47 of 47
COLFAX—Colfax City Council approved a Chamber of Commerce request Monday night for $1,840 from the lodging tax fund for website maintenance and design of a new site. The amount covers the annual cost the current website, $240, plus 80 hours of work to build a new site from scratch and do all the linking, Chamber President Nancy Cochran told the council. The chamber would keep the current site up and then “probably” replace it with the new one. Cochran said the chamber hopes to take over the maintenance costs in a year. Due to the shutd...
COLFAX-Carpenter, McGuire & DeWulf, PS., attorneys at law with full-time offices in Davenport, Odessa, Ritzville and Colfax, recently changed its name to McGuire, DeWulf, Kragt & Johnson, P.S. "John Kragt and Matthew Johnson have both grown up in our firm, and we felt they earned putting their names on the door," senior partner Rusty McGuire said. "Ken Carpenter retired a little over a year ago, and we felt now was as good a time as any to make the change." Johnson, a Colfax native, joined the...
ROSALIA—The Rosalia Museum has some new displays after a homeowner’s improvement project unearthed items believed to connect to the Steptoe Tohotonimme Battle in 1858. While digging a hole for a drain pipe, a Rosalia family discovered a rust-covered bayonet and horseshoe about one foot below the surface. Rosalia Historical Commission member Diane Nebel heard about the discovered and met with the family who wanted to donate the items to the local library. The home is positioned at the foot of...
COLFAX—Whitman County Commissioners Monday approved three expenditures of federal CARES Act money, for which the county has a total of $2.7 million for COVID-19 relief. Commissioners committed $575,000 to small-business aid to be administered by Southeast Washington Economic Development Association (SEWEDA), up to $300,000 for Community Action Center and $100,000 for Palouse River Counseling. Another disbursement is expected around the end of September as commissioners hold some of the f...
COLFAX -- Whitman County Information Technology Director Lance Bishop announced Monday that the county will get out of hosting all of its Zoom meetings. Instead, he will set up individual administrators in each department to host their own meetings. The change is being made to avoid time limitations and mix-ups in which a Zoom meeting is scheduled, with the expectation that the I.T. Department will host it, but the department has not been told about it. The time issue is that, although anyone...
COLFAX—After a moist June, July came in under-average for precipitation. The rain gauge at the NRCS office logged two precipitation events totaling 0.32 inches. The majority came from a thunderstorm early in month, dropping 0.29 inches July 6. July 10 added 0.03 inches. That puts July in the books for just over half the average of 0.56 inches....
STEPTOE—Two people were transported to Whitman Hospital and Medical Center Aug. 15 with facial lacerations after colliding with a moose in the Steptoe area. According to the Washington State Patrol report, Larry and Sharron Templeton of Spokane were traveling in a 2002 Cadillac DeVille northbound on Highway 195 and hit the moose about 13 miles north of Colfax. The vehicle came to rest facing northbound in the southbound lane. The vehicle was towed by AK Towing and the moose carcass was unsalvagable....
COLFAX—A woman who appeared at the Whitman County Sheriff’s Office allegedly while high was arrested after drugs were discovered in the vehicle she was riding in. According to the arrest report, Joann Nettleingham, 44, Spokane, appeared at the Sheriff’s Office Aug. 13 wanting items seized during a previous case. While speaking with Sergeant Michael Jordan, Nettleingham exhibited signs of intoxication by a controlled substance. Concerned about the potential of her driving in that state, Sgt. Jordan observed her as she left and entered a vehic...
Wawawai Road-A 25 acre fire that had been contained is now spread across about 1,400 acres after overnight winds picked up Aug. 17. Although the fire was zero percent contained Monday morning, it was 30% contained with fire line around 90%. The original fire started off a motor home that caught fire on Wawawai Road, across the Snake River from Chief Timothy Park, about 4 p.m. Aug. 16. Whitman County Fire District 14 responded as did Asotin County and Clarkston. The Chief Timothy Fire had been...
OAKESDALE – On Crow Road, Friday, Aug. 14, a 40,000 pound combine and 7,000-pound header came around a corner and entered a low bridge. Partway across, the wood cracked and split and the combine's front wheels dropped toward the creek below. "We broke a bridge, beyond repair," said Mark Storey, Public Works director. On Saturday morning, a county bridge crew and commercial tow-truck freed the combine from the 1950/60s era span, known as the Trestle Creek Bridge. The crew then dismantled the b...
COLFAX—The Colfax School board voted unanimously Monday night to start school on time in full K-12 distance-learning mode, following the recommendation of the Whitman County Health Department. With the board’s decision, the local re-opening plan was posted to the district website and sent to the State Office of the Superintendent of Public Instruction and the Board of Education. In the livestreamed meeting Aug. 17, each Colfax board member and Superintendent Jerry Pugh appeared in squares on...
COLFAX-Bruning Funeral Home was awarded the Funeral Home of the Year award Aug. 14. "Oh wow," said Craig Corbeill, funeral home director and owner upon receiving the news. The award was presented by seven members of the Death Con committee. Death Con is an annual event bringing together the Washington State Funeral Directors Association and the Washington State Cemetery, Cremation, Funeral Association. While the event was canceled, committee members still made the trek to deliver the award...
If you are high on anything—other than joyful life—do not get in a car. In the Friday Colfax Daily Bulletin, a headline read ‘Traffic infraction+drugs=arrest.’ In less than half a year of reading the arrest reports of people thrown in jail or charged in Superior Court, I have lost track of the number of cases that boil down to that equation. The redundancy is getting a little dull and boring. So why both reporting on such cases? Two reasons: one is the simple fact my job is to write about 5,000 characters of news four days a week for the Bullet...
The President and his complicit Senate installed a Trump crony as Postmaster General, an appointee who then cut postal worker hours, who ordered that it was okay to deliver mail late, and so forth. So what do we hear now? That voting by mail, a process that would keep Americans safe during our runaway pandemic, won’t work because the post office won’t be able to deliver ballots on time! Amazing! Destroy it, then claim as he has done before, “Only I can fix it.” Except, Trump never fixes anything. Next, he’ll want to fix the post office by...
We vote by mail in Washington – and I miss the cookies – but my vote is still counted. When I first started voting, I would go to the local elementary school on election day. I’d stand in a short line, get my ballot, mark it, then put it in the box. And on the way out, there would always be a big stack of homemade cookies for the voters to sample, brought by the election workers. Since we now vote by mail in Washington, I miss the cookies. But I still feel an added sense of pride in my country every time I fill out a ballot and put it in the m...
If Americans are to receive all of their electricity without coal and natural gas by 2035, they will need nuclear power. Even if Washingtonians, who already procure over 70 percent of their electricity from the hydro, are to be completely devoid of fossil fuel generation by 2045, they must have nuclear. Washington’s Clean Energy Transformation Act passed earlier this year by the legislature leans heavily on renewable fuels, particularly wind and solar. It calls for electrical generation to be c...
PULLMAN — Police Chief Gary Jenkins has authorized officers to ticket individuals who refuse to wear a mask while coronavirus orders from Gov. Jay Inslee remain in effect. In a press release Wednesday, Aug. 19, on the decision to allow enforcement of mask mandates, Jenkins said his officers “stand between those who are law-abiding and those whose actions risk the health and safety of others.” “Violators of the governor’s proclamations not only put the violator’s health at risk, but the health of our entire community,” he said, noting office...
CHENEY -- A series of small wildfires has grown into a 200-acre-plus blaze near Badger Lake about 15 miles south of Cheney. The fires began around 5:04 p.m. Sunday evening under hot, dry conditions, and are burning in grassy areas dotted with stands of ponderosa pine. According to a news release from the Washington State Patrol, about 50-70 homes are threatened. Initially, Level 2 "be prepared to leave" evacuation orders were enacted but state Department of Natural Resources spokesperson...
OLYMPIA — Two state agencies have banned target shooting on the lands they manage. The state Department of Fish and Wildlife and the state Department of Natural Resources have banned shooting until further notice. "We implemented several fire risk prevention measures for WDFW lands in Eastern Washington earlier this summer," Fish and Wildlife Lands Division Manager Cynthia Wilkerson said. Hunting is allowed to continue, she said. Target-shooting restrictions will remain in effect until the risk of wildfire decreases, Wilkerson s...
The formerly shuttered livestock processing facility in Odessa has a new lease on life, with the new owners using the facility to help launch a direct-sales beef program. Miles Curtis, who ranches near Odessa, Ewan and Tokio, bought the facility this spring. The facility had formerly been operated by the non-profit group Cattle Producers of Washington. The new plant, called Limit Bid Packing, processes the beef for Curtis’ direct sales program, as well as processing animals for outside c...
There were 69 new positive COVID tests reported Saturday and Sunday, at least one of which is in a Greek house congregate living situation. According to Public Health Director Troy Henderson, there is a “strong connection” between the cases. All were from Pullman and mostly young adults. Thirteen cases were in people in the 0-19 age range and the rest in the 20-39 age range. The spike coincides with the recent increase of Washington State University students to the Pullman area. The increase in people in Whitman County does not change the metri...
