From the Dayton Chronicle archives

Ten Years Ago

February 5, 2014

Local farmers Jack Wright, Curtis, Will Wright and Jason Lynch gained a new perspective of two elements, soil and water, two elements crucial to farming after the opportunity to harvest wheat, barley and canola seed in Australia.

The Dayton High School Robotics Team is sending a distress signal through the community asking for help programming the C++ software in the 2014 FIRST Robotics competition. "We don't have any team members with this kind of experience," Dayton High School Ag Shop teacher Steve McLean declared.

Twenty-Five Years Ago

February 3, 1999

January 30, 1999 the Columbia County Rural Electric Association marked the 60th anniversary of the formation of the Dayton-based electric cooperative. Columbia REA formed when local area farmers were unable to afford service from the investor-owned utility that served the cities of Dayton and Waitsburg. At the first meeting of the co-operative held February 3 1939, Grace A. Mead was elected president, Donald G. Harris, secretary/treasurer. From its original seventy-two members, the cooperative now serves of 3,100 accounts, across a distribution system 1,500 miles long spread over 3,000 square miles, in Columbia, Walla Walla, and Umatilla counties.

The Columbia County Sheriff's Department will have a new tool to aid in the investigation of suspects and in determining the reliability of witnesses. The Columbia County Board of Commissioners approved the Sheriff's Department's request to use Law and Justice Funds to purchase a Computerized Voice Stress Analyzer, with a purchase price of $9,770 to include the unit itself and training for Undersheriff Kevin Hayes.

Fifty Years Ago

February 7, 1974

Dayton student at Eastern Washington State College, Sherri L. Grubb, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Walter Grubb, is one of 24 selected EWSC students to be EXPO '74 World's Fair public relations ambassadors to the Inland Empire.

Molly Magill, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Glenn Magill, a Respiratory Therapy student at Highline College, is now working at Providence hospital in Seattle as part of her training program.

Navy Fireman Recruit Carl D. Russell, 1973 graduate, son of Mr. and Mrs. Harold H. Russell, graduated from recruit training at the Naval Training Center in San Diego, Calif. He is scheduled to report to Electrician's Mate "A" School.

Sharon Hurst, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Rex Hurst, enlisted in the Women's Army Corp after seven weeks of basic training and 11 weeks of schooling in field message coding division.

Tri-County Music Festival serving Dayton, Pomeroy, Prescott and Waitsburg will be held in the high school according to overall coordinator Richard Kirsch, Dayton high school music director and teacher. Approximately 200 students are expected to participate.

Seventy-Five Years Ago

February 3, 1949

Farmers seek support from state legislature on agricultural laws to: Make it illegal to change our time; to preserve the 40-mill tax limit; to exempt agricultural equipment from over legal limit highway provisions; to protect the growers of produce against financial loss caused by processors go bankrupt; to protect dairyman against duplication of inspection; to support wheat and potato growers to establish state commissions; and more adequate rural health programs.

E.L. McAlister contributed some clothes which were being shipped to Europe. He enclosed is name and address in a pair of shoes. He received an answer: "These days I got shoes by the Care and found in them your address, so I am very happy to be able to thank you. I am one of the beings who had to leave the frontier Czechoslovakia-Austria. I lost my farm and all I had there. The goodness of you, helps me to believe that better times may come again for this world."

When you turn out a light that isn't needed, you're protecting our own electric service. Until warm weather in the mountains increases stream flow, the power situation everywhere in the Northwest will continue be "tight."

One Hundred Years Ago

February 8, 1924

No information available.

One Hundred Twenty-Five Years Ago

February 4, 1899

C.B. Woodworth went to the Tukanon to inspect the tunnel on the Alice mine, returning Wednesday evening as far as the Webfoot country, encountered the blizzard on reaching the top of the ridge.