100 Years Ago

Sept. 25, 1921

That the Pendleton Round-Up will receive publicity soon in the Dutch Indies is a statement made by Captain J. N. Bouman, who was an interested spectator of the big show Saturday. He is in command of the steamer Taikenbang, which reached Portland last week. The Taikenbang is a boat of 17,000 tons displacement and plies between the East Indies and our western coast. Its draught is so great that it is necessary at this time of year to dredge the channel in order for the ship to get up to Portland, he said. Captain Bouman often writes for newspapers in Java and he declares he intends to write an account of his experiences here when he returns to the far East.

50 Years Ago

Sept. 25, 1971

Sgt. James T. Bradshaw isn’t worried about the shortage of men in the Pendleton unit of the Oregon National Guard. Across the country the Army National Guard faces a potential loss of about 100,000 men before next summer, Pentagon officials say. This loss will be offset in part by enlistments of men with prior military service and by recruits. The Pendleton unit, Troop I, 3rd squadron, 163 regiment, is allowed 108 men. Presently it has about 90 men. Bradshaw attributes his loss of men to the big draft in 1965. “I haven’t even tried to recruit,” he said. “I may start letting people know there are some openings. We just take them as they walk in, if they are qualified.” Men in the Pendleton unit come from all over. They join here then move away but don’t want to change units, Bradford said, because it gives them an excuse to come back to Pendleton to visit once a month.”

25 Years Ago

Sept. 25, 1996

It’s another record year for spring chinook salmon nests in the Umatilla River. The Umatilla tribes reported a redd count of nearly 322, up from 287 in 1990, the second-best year for spawning chinook. Biologists began walking the river in mid-June and completed the redd count last week after a record spring chinook fishery in the Umatilla River this summer. The tribes and the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife trucked a record 2,200 spring chinook past Three Mile Dam this spring. Although the numbers are the best since fish began returning to the Umatilla in 1988, after an absence of 70 years, of more than 1,600 fish that continued upriver to spawn in the mainstem above Meacham Creek and North Fork Umatilla River, less than 60 percent survived as part of the escapement. Warm water temperatures in the Umatilla are one of the causes of the 30 to 40 percent death rate of the “King” salmon.