The Hood River County Sheriff’s Office, divers and construction crews assisted in the recovery of the vehicle believed to belong to the Martin family, who mysteriously disappeared in 1958, on March 7.
Jennifer Pauletto, the executive director of Washington Gorge Action Program, cuts the ribbon for White Salmon’s new Community Youth Center in the Parks Building, previously located on East Jewett since 1995, on March 13.Â
The Hood River County Sheriff’s Office, divers and construction crews assisted in the recovery of the vehicle believed to belong to the Martin family, who mysteriously disappeared in 1958, on March 7.
Crews contracted by the Hood River County Sheriff’s Office removed the chassis and engine of a car believed to be owned by the Martin family, who mysteriously disappeared nearly 70 years ago, buried deep in Cascade Locks’ canal at the beginning of March thanks to a tip from a local diver.
Having moved from East Jewett to the White Salmon’s Parks Building in Rheingarten, Washington Gorge Action Programs officially unveiled its new Community Youth Center, which provides after-school and summer care for local kids, the following week. Far removed from their days of being babysat, six Columbia High School students won the Washington State Knowledge Bowl in March, a first for the Bruins.
Jennifer Pauletto, the executive director of Washington Gorge Action Program, cuts the ribbon for White Salmon’s new Community Youth Center in the Parks Building, previously located on East Jewett since 1995, on March 13.Â
Nathan Wilson photo
Across the river, and nearly a year and a half after the City of The Dalles filed a public nuisance lawsuit against Saint Vincent de Paul, both parties agreed to dismiss the case. The city had received 1,300 emergency calls related to loitering and other activity outside the charity’s location on Pentland Street over a 12-month period, leading to a temporary closure for renovations and revision of Saint Vincent de Paul’s behavioral policies.
Confusion and layoffs at the federal level, and the subsequent impacts locally, made up the remainder of March’s biggest stories.
hree generations at the Height’s Floral in Hood River. From left to right, LindaMay Woosley, Tanner Hall and Tammy Cederstam.
Noah Noteboom photo
Columbia Gorge News found out that officials at the Mosier Community School, who were expecting to receive $860,000 from the U.S. Department of Energy to replace its 100-year-old boiler, among other upgrades, had been met with radio silence from their contacts at the agency. Libraries in Hood River and Wasco counties also discovered that the Sage Library Consortium courier system, which moved 91,582 items amongst its network in 2024, would be half-defunded, limiting patrons to just their local shelves absent emergency fundraising or a successful lawsuit.
As part of Trump’s immigration crackdown, he stripped all funding for a program that provided legal representation for unaccompanied minors in search of asylum, 80% of whom are victims of human trafficking, according to the Congressional Research Service. Hood River’s Immigration Counseling Service had 166 active cases across Oregon at the time, and continued to work them despite having losing 40% of its annual revenue as a result.
More indirectly, the Mt. Adams Institute, a Trout Lake nonprofit engaged in conservation, had to pull eight interns out of the field and fire five of nine staff members because of funding cuts to the United States Forest Service (USFS) and other agencies. In a win for the Yakama Nation, however, USFS temporarily paused commercial huckleberry picking in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, primarily due to habitat loss, invasive species and escalating conflicts between harvesters.
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