Verbatim: Jan. 31, 2024

The Mount Hood National Forest includes 1,159,000 acres which surround the mountain. It was first known as the Bull Run timber reserve, which was set aside in 1892 and included the same land as the present Bull Run watershed. It was extended in 1913 to include all of the forest lands from the Columbia River to the California line and was known as the Cascade Range Forest Reserve. In 1908, the division of national forests as they now exist, was made. Tom H. Sherrard is the supervisor of the new Mount Hood National Forest.

— Feb. 1, 1924, Hood River News

Bhagwan’s adoption claim adds wrinkle to visa arguments

The Immigration and Naturalization Service is investigating a petition filed by a 75-year-old native of India asking that guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh be entitled to become a permanent U.S. resident.

Swami Swarupananda, the natural father of the guru’s personal secretary, Anand Sheela, said Thursday he adopted the guru in 1936 when Rajneesh was 4 years old and kept the boy until age 7, when he returned to his natural parents. Swarupananda said, “The adoption was done in order to save the little boy from a fate of death — predicted by famous astrologers of the day.” He said the astrologers said if Rajneesh stayed with his parents he would die.

Swarupananda said he has lived in the United States since the early 1970s.

He said Thursday because he was the guru’s adoptive father, and also an immigrant to the United States, Rajneesh should be declared a lawful immigrant and permitted to stay in the country.

— The Dalles Daily Chronicle, Feb. 3, 1984

Warm Springs sets pace for Indian property

A century ago nobody realized the Warm Springs Indian Reservation could turn out to be such a moneymaker — it certainly was not intended that way.

The 1855 treaty that established the reservation in central Oregon was supposed to clear Indians away from valuable areas sought by white settlers along the Columbia River. The Indians were left with 640,000 acres of what looked like rugged mountainsides and high desert.

That seemingly worthless land now is generating up to $50 million in gross annual revenue. The 2,500 Wasco, Warm Springs and Paiutes on the reservation have done such a good job of making the best of things that federal officials are hoping less successful reservations will use some of their tactics.

“This is the bootstrap success story for Indian reservations in the United States,” said Bill Marsh of a Portland public relations firm hired by the tribe.

“The trouble with most Indian reservations is there is nothing for the Indians to do. That’s why they have bingo and sell cigarettes without taxes. But the elders of the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation saw back in the 1930s that they had to do something to provide jobs for Indians, especially the younger Indians, who were the ones leaving the reservation.”

In the past 25 years, the tribes have built a luxury resort overlooking the desert scenery, bought a sawmill to process their rich stands of Ponderosa pine and Douglas fir and installed a $30 million powerhouse on the Deschutes River to sell electricity.

— The Dalles Daily Chronicle, Jan. 31, 1984