100 years ago — 1922

A wholesale house of which the members of the Charles Co., dealers in confectionary and tobacco, will be the proprietors, will be built on Garden street, next door to the L. S. Bentley automobile supply house, according to announcement made today by Blaine Burton, who with B. B. Bybee, of Walla Walla, comprises the company. Work preparatory to the construction of the Pendleton building began today. The structure will cost $6,000. It will be a one story building. Mr. Burton states that the company is greatly extending its wholesale business and that the growth of the enterprise necessitates the construction of the building.

50 years ago — 1972

A 100-year-old stagecoach stop became Umatilla County’s 12th incorporated city Tuesday as residents of Ukiah voted 64-35 for incorporation. Within 80 days, another election will be called to elect five councilmen, and those five men will choose one of their number as mayor. Lloyd Waid, Ukiah, one of the leaders in the years-long effort to get Ukiah its first-class water system and then the move toward incorporation, said today that one of the big benefits of the incorporation will be to reduce the number of meetings in the community of 210. Ukiah now has a parks board, a water association, a fire control group, and others. “Now we can give all those jobs to the council and handle all the city’s business at one meeting a month,” Waid said. Becoming a city “should help us work together to solve our problems.” Beginning as a stagecoach stop, Ukiah developed a dairying industry to furnish butter and cheese to the gold mining district in the south. Today, cattle, timber and tourists furnish the base for Ukiah’s economy.

25 years ago — 1997

Gordon’s Electric and Heating of Pendleton closed a deal with a Melbourne, Australia, electrical engineering and contracting firm to help design and install equipment for a new pelleting and cubing mill. The mill is being built in Gunbower, Australia, by Teangi Stock Feeds, a company that produces livestock feed in southern Australia and exports livestock to Asia. Gordon’s Electric and Heating built the control panel that provides operator interface to the cubing portion of the mill. In March, it was selected to design and aid in the installation and control work for the cubing part of the mill, whose equipment was built by Cooper’s Equipment Inc. of Burley, Idaho. Cubing takes alfalfa, or a combination of alfalfa and other feeds, and processes it into cubes. Gordon’s Electric and Heating has more than 10 years experience with the cubing industry. Last year, the company installed electrical and control equipment in five new mills in Idaho, Utah and Nevada, as well as a plant in South Korea.