Good old days - March 24, 2011

125 years ago, March 26, 1886

A private letter informs us that the surveyors on the Spokane & Palouse railroad have about completed cross-sectioning and locating their line as far south as Rosalia. Grading will commence and a contract for forty miles of the road will be let within a week.

Almost every town in Whitman and Spokane counties is having a railroad boom.

Our enterprising druggist, G.W. Sutherland, has prepared a lot of squirrel poison at home which he sells cheaper than the imported article. Good scheme, keep the money at home.

An epidemic of whooping cough prevails at Uniontown now.

Coyotes got among a band of A. Fudge’s sheep at Sutton and slaughtered twenty-one.

Rev. Cairns is meeting with good success in securing subscriptions in this city for the Colfax College.

100 years ago, March 24, 1911

Mr. and Mrs. R. M. Ryan this week legally adopted the Vedder twin girl baby born the 19th of December, the mother, as all Colfax people know, dying a few days after the birth of the twins. The other twin, a boy, died soon after the mother. This was the second pair of twins born to the Vedders. Mrs. Vedder being the mother of five children.

Mrs. Vedders father and mother, Mr. And Mrs. J. H. Barger, have the three older children. Mr. and Mrs. Ryan are justly proud of their new treasure.

Albion affairs- an epidemic of colds or la grippe has been rampant here of late. Spring has come, else there is nothing in signs. Just notice the boys and men round the corner pitching horse-shoes. Albion’s baseball team is practicing every day on the home grounds, blowing up muscle for their first game of the season to be played April 1.

C. E. Hoag is one of Albion’s poultry men who is making good with fancy bred chickens. It is worth one’s time to take a peep at his birds, some of which are show birds with a record hard to beat. His pens contain but one breed, known as Rose Comb Rhode Island Reds and of which he is justly proud. E. P. Deering’s birds are the pure strain Buff Leghorn and Fred Willoughby handles the Indian Games.

75 years ago, March 20 1936

One of the oldest buildings in the business district is being torn down. It is the old rooming and boarding house at the northwest corner of Mill and Canyon streets, which was built as a one-story structure in the early 1880s and first occupied by Brodick, the photographer of the tin-type days when the subject was placed before the camera with his head in a brace. Homer Hull, who is doing the wrecking, states that he will use the lumber for a three-room house behind his home at S.107 Mill street. The lot to be vacated will be fenced in and seeded to grass by the Weskils, owners of the property, and Roy Endsley will use some of the space for the display of a nursery stock.

The killing of a dog on the school grounds at Hooper, in a revengeful mood directed against its owner, brought John Carter, 18, into justice court here Wednesday to plead guilty to the reckless discharge of firearms. A woman in the neighborhood of the school house complained to the sheriff’s office here that Cater, on March 12, had stood on the highway and directed his aim toward the school house.

It was said that school had been dismissed, that no children were in range of Carter’s gun, but that several were playing on the opposite side of the building. Carter, brought here by Deputy Ora J. Rees and Patrolman H. G. S. M. McCroskey, was given a 30-day suspended sentence and assessed $13.30 in costs.

50 years ago, March 23, 1961

Robert C. Huffman, 30, Hay, miraculously escaped injury when his stopped truck and trailer carrying a new $10,000 crawler tractor were struck by a westbound UP freight train three miles west of Hooper. The impact split the trailer from the tractor throwing the truck to the south side of the road and hurling the trailer and tractor 80 feet to the north side of the railroad.

Construction of a city water line from the end of Cedar street to the golf clubhouse will get underway soon with the Elks club to furnish the pipe and the city the labor. Water will be used only to supply domestic water to the clubhouse. The course will continue to be irrigated with water pumped from the North Palouse.

Mrs. Alvin Brooks announced the Puppeteers will give a program this Sunday in the St. John Christian church.

25 years ago, March 20, 1986

At 3:30 a.m. Saturday a school bus full of Wayne Larsen’s fourth grade students from Jennings Elementary went up Steptoe Butte to see Haley’s y Comet on the last leg of its visit to earth. Jimmy Rosenbeck, using his father’s high-powered binoculars, was the first to spot the comet. It was about one fist width above the horizon. Clyde Hatley, bus shop foreman, said it was the first ever 3 a.m. booking for a Colfax school bus.

Bids were opened from 76 farms for a total of 9,399 acres in the new ASC conservation reserve program Monday. Announcement of the successful bidders is expected Friday. Whitman County was listed at 28,000 acres as a goal for CRP bids.