100 Years Ago

Oct. 2, 1921

Are there any expert crow hunters in Umatilla county? Ed Dupuis who lives east of Nolin has a lot of them to spare at his place. Every morning they pass his farm in huge flocks. He thinks they roost at night in groves near Echo and they come east in the mornings. He declares that he has counted as many as 5,000,000. The fact that they are good harvesters is what peeves Ed. He has crops of apples, sunflowers and corn on his farm, and the crows are adepts in helping him gather his stuff. They knock more apples down than they eat, and the hogs in the orchard finish the cooperative stunt by coming along and disposing of the fruit. He’d like to get rid of his feathered friends.

50 Years Ago

Oct. 2, 1971

Four months ago a black puppy wandered into the Umatilla County Road Dept. shops near Pendleton. In moments he won the hearts of the dog lovers who work there. They named him “Bo,” fixed a place for him to sleep and saw that he got plenty to eat. Bo returned affection for affection and set himself up as a watchdog as well. “The petty thefts that used to occur at night stopped,” says Jim McMahon, purchasing agent for the department and one of Bo’s new friends. A couple of weeks ago, Bo was hit by a car and nearly died. But no bones were broken and he recovered consciousness. His friends dug into their pockets and paid Bo’s hospital bill. Today Bo is back on the job, walking a bit gingerly but with a sparkle in his eye.

25 Years Ago

Oct. 2, 1996

The Tower Fire south of Ukiah reached its peak a little more than a month ago after a 44,000-foot high smoke plume dominated the horizon. Evening cooled the 90-degree weather on the river, causing the chimney-like process to collapse onto itself and blow fire for miles, pretty much killing everything as if a bomb had gone off. While most fires are wind and topography driven, the plume-dominated fire created its own thunderhead, lightning and rain, and the high-intensity burns had flame lengths in excess of 100 feet and sucked air from miles around. The unusual fire patterns, remote location and varied topography of the Tower Fire area present a rehabilitation challenge to Forest Service officials who say it will be “a couple generations (recovering) and in our lifetime it will never be the same.”