100 years ago

Senator Charles L. McNary believes, after personal observation, that the Umatilla rapids project has very important advantages over the Muscle Shoals project on the Tennessee river. He believes horse-power can be developed much more cheaply and that fertilizers can be manufactured at much less financial outlay on the Oregon project.

“Among the various development projects that I inspected during my visit to Eastern Oregon was the Umatilla rapids site,” said Senator McNary today. “Through the efforts of the delegation, congress at its last session, appropriated $50,000 for the purpose of making a survey and study of the project.”

50 years ago

The Freezeout fire in the scenic Hells Canyon area of northeast Oregon was one of four major blazes still raging, but containment of all four was predicted today if winds stay calm.

Firefighters in Oregon, Idaho and Montana welcomed predictions of a cooling trend, but officials warned that fire danger is still very high.

“We don’t have the weather whipped yet,” said Roger Leanard of the Boise Interagency Fire Control Center.

“There’s been some showers in Montana that have helped, but the weather in central and northern Idaho, eastern Oregon and eastern Washington is still very dry,” Leonard said.

U.S. Forest Service officials in the baker district said fire lines at the Freezeout blaze held Thursday afternoon despite winds up to 20 m.p.h. They said the fire remained stable at 11,850 acres because more of the new flames covered ground already scorched.

Some 450 firefighters were burning out the northeast corner of the fire down extremely steep slopes toward the banks of the Snake River this morning.

“It is in such steep and rugged county, it’s tough to get a line around it,” said Leonard. Freezeout has been burning for eight days.

25 years ago

An attempt to bridge two plans together only created a standstill in both of them.

The Oregon Department of Transportation proposed replacing the bridge over the Umatilla River at Echo and building a temporary bridge over the Westland Irrigation Canal west of town during the construction.

The Umatilla County Planning Commission approved the plan to brief the irrigation canal. But it denied a conditional-use permit for the ODOT plan for replacing the Umatilla River bridge.

“The applicant did now show that the proposal took into consideration the conditional uses in farm use zones,” senior planner Patty Perry said.

A few members of the Echo community showed up at a hearing before the Planning Commission made its ruling to voice opposition to the Umatilla River project.

ODOT had lumped the two plans into one request, Perry said, but land-use regulations stipulate they had to be separate “because they’re in different locations and have different owners of the property affected,” Perry explained.