100 YEARS AGO

Sept. 26, 1912

Chester Estes, the 11-year-old son of James Estes of Imnaha Park was probably fatally shot by a younger brother while the boys were out hunting last Sunday. From the first the gravity of the case was recognized. Peritonitis almost always develops in such cases and this is the most difficult to combat.

Enterprise is dressing itself in its very best for the Wallowa County Fair, which opens next Monday and continues all through the week. Electric lights have been strung across the principal business streets and clear out to the fairgrounds, so all these thoroughfares will be bright with incandescent lamps when the crowds arrive for the big show.

Figures just finished by county surveyor Rudd indicate that the canyon of Snake River on the eastern border of Wallowa County is the deepest chasm in the northwest, and perhaps in the whole United States. For many miles the river runs between walls 3,000 to 6,000 feet high. Nowhere in the whole length of Wallowa County is there a wagon road to the river from the hills above.

The transmission wires on the Enterprise Electric companys extension between Enterprise and Wallowa have all been put in. As soon as the transformers arrive from New York from the factory, wires will be put into service. Then Wallowa and Lostine will have day electric current, as Enterprise has now.

70 YEARS AGO

Sept. 24, 1942

The continued dry weather throughout the state and the consequent increase in the fire hazard in forest areas resulted in a determination this week by forest officials to close all the state and national forests in Oregon to further entry. With the opening of the deer season set for Sept. 26, the order came as a disappointing blow.

The scrap drive for Wallowa County was brought to a climax last Saturday, which had been designated Rally Day. Winner of the $5 in Defense Stamps offered by the Enterprise Chamber of Commerce for the largest amount of scrap brought in during the last week of the drive was Charley Crow, who turned in 5,020 pounds.

Army crews were busy most of last week clearing up and trucking away the wreckage of the four-motored bomber which crashed near the Divide Cow Camp two weeks ago. By the end of the week the army crews had moved out and a number of people visited the scene.

JOSEPH Mrs. Mary Kuykendall has sold her place on Big Sheep Creek to Fred Bird, and will give possession soon. This is the old Huffman place at the mouth of Coyote Gulch and was homesteaded by the Huffman family more than 50 years ago.

50 YEARS AGO

Sept. 27, 1962

Ralph Longfellow, sheepman of Council, Idaho, was very pleased to be in Wallowa Memorial Hospital Friday afternoon, following 27 hours in the brush subsequent to a car wreck on the Gumboot road. He was discovered by Bob Bird of Enterprise who was driving a log truck for B.W. James.

The appropriation of a $4,500 advance to Joseph for preliminary planning of a sanitary sewer system, estimated to cost $315,900, was announced Tuesday by the Community Facilities Administration. The applicant reports that they have no public sewer system and that because of hard pan formation near the surface, individual disposal systems are unsatisfactory.

IMNAHA Due the extreme dry weather the ranchers from the Bridge to Gumboot will close their deeded land to all hunting until we have rain.

Max Kilgore, labor foreman for the Game Commission in Enterprise, pointed out this week the workings, benefits and dangers of the rotary screens placed in many of the irrigation ditches in Wallowa County by the Game Commission. The purpose is to deter steelhead and salmon from the irrigation ditches back to the main stream in their travels to downstream to the ocean.

25 YEARS AGO

Sept. 24, 1987

With its Old World Bavarian atmosphere, Alpenfest promises to provide an enjoyable family occasion for everyone this weekend. We may be small, but we have big-time entertainment, said publicity chairman Pat Combes about the lakes 14th annual end-of-summer celebration.

By Grace Bartlett for the Chieftain On Sept. 26 it will have been 51 years since the remains of Old Chief Joseph were taken from a field near the forks of the Lostine and Wallowa rivers and reburied at the base of a monument built for him in the Indian cemetery at the foot of Wallowa Lake.

This weekend the Joseph United Methodist Church is celebrating the 100th year of its humble beginnings as a Sunday school. The church was established as an outgrowth of the Alder circuit in September, 1897.

IMNAHA A.L. Duckett was honored Wednesday evening by a large group of friends at a pie social at the Imnaha schoolhouse by the Imnaha Christian Fellowship. There were two reasons his 93rd birthday and to express appreciation for his donation of the property for the church site.