Looking Back and History Mystery from June 6

The group that got the urban renewal agency’s boundary and budget slashed is now preparing to ask voters to end the agency completely. It would take something “dramatic” from the city to forestall the petition drive, said committee member Jerry Wilson. “Our group looks upon the attempt to extend the urban renewal timeline as a serious problem and one that really calls into question the integrity of the city,” Wilson said.

It’s not as big as the Bea house, but a planned Rowena garage sticks out just the same to Friends of the Columbia Gorge. The Wasco County Planning Commission didn’t see it the same way, however, and Tuesday denied the group’s appeal of the local decision allowing the garage. The Portland-based land-use watchdog group appealed the recent decision to allow Phillip Evans and Davina Craig to build a detached garage on their 2.25-acre parcel west of Rowena.

Former city councilor Bob McFadden last week protested parts of a land use ordinance he helped adopt. McFadden, who works for Fadness Realty Inc., said a pending sale his company was handling was dropped after the prospective buyers learned they’d have to give up 75 feet to right of way for future streets.

40 years ago – 1979

Local residents contacted this week seemed strongly behind the idea of covering the Natatorium to provide year-round swimming programs. A covered swimming pool in The Dalles has been a topic of discussion locally for many years, and a $335,000 bond issue to build a covered pool at The Dalles Junior High was on an October, 1967 ballot. It was beaten 1,205 to 578.

They were two among thousands, both adventuresome in spirit, when they left Nova Scotia and headed down the Yukon River for the Alaska gold rush. After a year, one of them gave up gold hunting and came to The Dalles, that was Lloyd Heckman’s father; the other married an Eskimo woman and stayed  on the Lower Yukon,and  that was Tom Heckman’s dad. Tom and Lloyd had never met until this week, when Tom brought his family here en route from Utah back to his home on the Yukon River.

Tami Barrett and Gene Rayburn of The Dalles Junior High School will present a hobo skit at the Tuesday meeting of The Dalles Christian Business & Professional Women’s Council at the Tapadra Inn at 7 p.m.

SALEM, Ore. (UPI) —The Travel Information Section of Oregon’s Department of Transportation said Thursday the gasoline shortage has dealt a severe blow to tourism, one of the state’s top industries.

60 years ago – 1959

A 55-year-old Seaside man was fatally injured and four other persons were hurt in a car-truck crash on the Columbia Highway just north of Hood River Monday.

Dalles City Council last night, during its first regular July meeting, approved a budget, called for improved city ambulance service and, in a special session, revised specifications on an automobile for the city manager.

The variety of atomic applications, even at this early date of development, “seems to be without limits,” a speaker from the Hanford installation told Dalles Kiwanians at their last meeting.

The Girl Scout Day Camp will begin its first session on Tuesday, July 14, at 9:30 a.m. at the Walt Ericksen ranch at 23rd and Mt. Hood streets.

LONDON (UPI)—Soviet scientists today hailed the rocket flight of two dogs and a rabbit as proof that man will soon be flying through space.

WASHINGTON (UPI)—The Atomic Energy Commission is coming clean about the dirty H-bomb. For the first time since the monster Bikini test explosion of March 1, 1954, the AEC has admitted existence of what long since had come to be known in nonofficial circles as the fission-fusion-fission bomb. From the standpoint of radioactive fallout, the Bikini bomb was perhaps the dirtiest nuclear weapon ever exploded, although the Russians came close to matching it in their tests last October.

80 years ago – 1939

 Almost half a million dollars has been collected in taxes by Wasco County this year, County Treasurer J. R. Johnson revealed today.

No trace of a “revolt” on the part of WPA workers in the district has been seen since the new congressional wage scale has been put into effect, H. R. Landfare, resident engineer, said today.

The body of George D. Brodie, outstanding in Dufur’s banking, social and political circles for many years, was laid to rest this afternoon in The Dalles Odd Fellows’ cemetery under direction of C. R. Callaway & Son.

PORTLAND, July 7. (UP)—The Bonneville administration is prepared to build a 110,000-volt line to The Dalles if a Wasco county people’s utility district is approved in a forthcoming election, Administrator Frank A. Banks said today. At present, construction for the line has been scheduled as far as Hood River, Banks said.

Trapping Beavers In Maine—By building dams and causing Maine rivers and streams to grow stagnant, beavers are seriously cutting down the supply of game fish, causing the fish and game department to wage war on the busy little animals. The beavers are not being killed, but transported far back in the wilderness where fishermen hardly ever go.

LONDON, July 7. (UP)—Great Britain and France are negotiating an agreement under which British bombing planes would make long distance training flights over France, it was understood today. British planes would make nonstop flights to southern and southwestern France and back to England, thus providing a longer range for practice flights and giving navigational experience for British pilots over France, where they would be operating in event of war.

100 years ago – 1919

Amid the tooting of whistles and the cheers of the crowds gathered at vantage points to see the sight, the first airplane to fly over the city of The Dalles arrived at 9 o’clock this morning when Lieutenant John M. Fetters, piloting an army biplane, and his mechanician, Sergeant Owen Kessel, came soaring over the hills east of the city and gracefully landed on the field selected on the Columbia river flats.

Joseph W. Steimkamp of Aumsville, Ore., was killed this morning at Millers when he was struck by train number five. When he was picked up Steimkamp was still breathing but his skull was so badly crushed that he died on his way to the hospital in this city.

Carl Mell, one of The Dalles pioneer citizens, died in Astoria this morning after a brief illness at the home of his son, Fred Mell.

LONDON, June 30.—(By airship across the Atlantic)—”An aerial mail from England to America which, I believe, within two or three years, will grow into a frequent and dependable transocean traffic began with the voyage of the R-34 to Long Island,” Howard E. Coffin, council of national defense member of the aviation commission, declared to the United States here today.

WASHINGTON, July 7.—The United States had a “secret government” during the war which functioned in disregard of the law, Chairman Graham of the special house committee on war department expenditures charged in a statement which characterized as “secret government” the advisory commission of the Council of National Defense.

WASHINGTON, July 7.—Prohibition leaders are planning on a vigorous attack on 2.75 percent beer which is still being sold in many places.