Good Old Days

125 years ago

December 17, 1886

No less than twenty-five lawyers gain a livelihood in Whitman County.

Lippitt Bros. received from Portland this week an order for a carload of lentil, a weed mentioned in the scriptures and common in the fields of Europe, the seed of which is used for food. Is it grown in the Palouse country?

Jos. Greif of Uniontown made a liberal donation to the railroad company for depot grounds.

The young people of the M.E. church will give a necktie and apron social at the residence of Dr. Cal Boswell New Years eve. Each gentleman present will be expected to hem an apron, after which a prize will be offered for the best specimen of needlework.

Prof. Greenstreet has organized another singing school at Palouse City. he will conduct the exercises at the Christian church.

Miss Kittie Bragg returned home from Walla Walla yesterday.

100 years ago

December 15, 1911

Louis Bolon, held in the county jail awaiting transportation to Monroe to begin a sentence in the reformatory for having forged a check for $25 and passing it at the Colfax National Bank, was found crouching in a large water tank on top of the steel cells in the county jail Sunday night at lock-up. Bolon has since confessed he planned to remain in the tank until the other prisoners had been locked in the steel cage for the night and then dig through the south wall of the jail and drop to the ground under the window to the commissioners room. He believed with the aid of the case knives and forks he could dig through the wall in one night.

The skating rink will be closed Thursday and Friday on account of the Poultry show.

The two ladies in the race for places on the St. John city council at the election last week made a good run of it but were defeated.

Suspension of business at the hotel bar last week left Lamont with only one saloon.

75 years ago

December 11, 1936

Word was received at the county agent’s office Saturday from the Rural Electrification Administration, Washington, D.C., that application for a farmers’ power line loan had been approved in the amount of $200,000 in response to applications and consumer surveys sent in November by over six hundred farmers from Lamont to Onecho. Over two hundred miles of proposed lines are to be built with this loan to serve farmers of these districts who have heretofore been unable to secure electric service.

An offer of the Works Progress Administration to lay 4500 feet of concrete sidewalks on Oak and Cedar streets and to lay 600 feet of 12-inch drainage pipe on Tenth street was accepted Monday night by the city council.

Expenses accounting to $34,771 were incurred by the state banking department in liquidation of the assets of the defunct Colfax State Bank, according to the petition for closing the liquidation which was approved last Friday by Superior Court Judge R.L. McCroskey.

An interesting map of the eastern half of Whitman County, accurately locating all roads as well as showing the location of all farmsteads, schools, churches, warehouses, grain elevators, railroads and railroad sidings, has been completed from aerial photographs taken in connection with the wheat allotment program.

50 years ago

December 14, 1961

Northern Pacific Railroad crews are working this week to repair sections of track at the depot crossing in Garfield that were damaged early last Saturday when seven cars of a freight train jumped the tracks and were derailed.

If you’ve got to throw snowballs, for goodness sake don’t a hit a policeman! That’s the lesson 18-year-old Wilber Smith, WSU Student from LaCenter, learned last weekend, and he spent four days in the county jail thinking about it over third degree assault charges from a campus snowball fight last Friday.

Mr. and Mrs. H. Huchkens and children were at the SDA auditorium in Farmington Saturday night to show movies of industry and family life they took while on their trip last summer to Alaska.

25 years ago

December 11, 1986

Garfield/Palouse Vikings pointed to the rafter Saturday at the Seattle Kingdome after defeating the Crescent Loggers of Joyce 57-40 to take the state eight-man championship. The title was the first for the Vikings.

Contractors who worked on widening and resurfacing of the south end of the Endicott Road and county commissioners faced off in commissioners’ chambers Monday. Commissioners contend the project is incomplete and unacceptable and contractors contend engineering design on the road was at fault. Seubert Excavators widened, shaped, leveled and resurfaced three miles of the Endicott Road from the fairgrounds north.

Union employees of Eucon Corporation of Lewiston went on strike at the Despain rock quarry at Winona Tuesday. A Eucon spokesman said the company decided last week to go non-union. The company moved non-union employees from other jobs to Winona to continue work while the eight employees at the quarry picketed.

10 years ago

December 13, 2001

Tekoa and Oakesdale school boards met together in a special session Monday night to discuss sharing a superintendent between the two districts.

Colfax Police last Wednesday received a report that vehicle tracks had been left on McDonald Park. The grass on the north side of the park was tracked. Chief Barney Buckley said new snow on the tracks made it difficult to determine exactly when the tracks had been left.