Good Old Days

125 years ago

The Commoner, August 25, 1893

Andrew Johnson, who drives a coach for H. H. Conover on the old Hubbard place, met with a distressing accident on Sunday morning. Johnson had hitched up a team and was ready to drive up to the house when a piece of the harness got loose and frightened one of the animals. The horses jumped to one side and overturned the vehicle, and Johnson was thrown out and sustained a fracture of the left leg. Dr. Pocock went out from this city and dressed the broken limb.

100 years ago

The Colfax Commoner, August 23, 1918

The members of the city council took up the question of repairing the city bridges at their meeting Monday night and from the results of this discussion the Fairview bridge, which has been closed to traffic for several months, may be repaired and opened to the public.

75 years ago

The Colfax Gazette-Commoner, August 20, 1943

Granting the request of Fire Chief Earl Krouse, the fire committee of the city council Tuesday ordered a new fire siren of about twice the sound carrying capacity of the present siren.

Awakened by the sound of crackling flames at 2:30 o'clock Tuesday morning, Mr. and Mrs. Sam Vogler and two children escaped in their nightclothes from the two-story, seven-room home that was completely destroyed on their farm four miles south of Dusty on the Central Ferry highway.

50 years ago

The Colfax Gazette, August 22, 1968

Colfax has obviously made a small gain in population the past few months and could achieve a substantial boost lasting over several years if more local housing and trailer space were available.

25 years ago

Whitman County Gazette, August 28, 1993

Firefighters from Colfax, Albion, Steptoe and Diamond responded to an alarm at the St. Ignatius Manor in Colfax Tuesday night. According to Fire Chief Jim Krouse, a manor tenant pulled a fire alarm after seeing smoke on the roof of a building. When firefighters arrived, there was smoke hovering above the building and a heavy smell of smoke in the air. Krouse said that when the first responders saw the smoke above the building they “feared the worst” and called for assistance from the other fire departments.

Crews did not find a cause for the smoke in the building and decided the smoke must have derived for a neighbor's burning operation.

10 years ago

Whitman County Gazette, August 21, 2008

State fire crews took control Tuesday of a fire that roared through the canyons in north Whitman County near Rock Lake. No homes were destroyed, as the blaze roared across 2,289 acres of rangeland and timber.