Compiled by Don Hoiness from archived copies of The Bulletin at the Des Chutes Historical Museum.
100 YEARS AGO
For the week ending
Feb. 23, 1913
New railroad (from The Bulletin, Feb. 1963)
Bend, which by February, 1913, was getting used to railroads, with two lines in operation through the Deschutes gorge, heard of plans for a new railroad into Central Oregon. This was the Oregon Eastern, and officials of the OWR&N said it would be built across the state, from Ontario via Burns to Bend. Work was to start at once, President Farrell of the Harriman line said, with the first effort to be concentrated in the Malheur canyon.
At Bend, the new railroad, Farrell said, would connect with OWR&N line that had been constructed up the Deschutes canyon in 1909-1911. The word from Farrell was big news in Bend, and The Bulletin printed an extra. But, for various reasons, the line was never constructed over the High Desert to Bend.
First paper
The first paper ever made from Central Oregon pulp reached Bend in late February, 1913. The paper was sent to The Bend Bulletin from San Francisco, by S.O. Johnson of the Deschutes Lumber Co. Earlier in the year, John M. Ryan had engineered the shipment of two carloads of lodgepole pine to Camas, Wash.
Planing mill
Plans for establishment of a planing mill near the roundhouse on the railroad at the south city limits of Bend were announced by H.A. Miller of the Miller Lumber Co, The E.A. Griffin mill was to supply the lumber for the planer.
The Bend Water, Light & Power Company agreed to build a power line to the new plant. Miller said 12 men would be employed in this new mill.
75 YEARS AGO
For the week ending
Feb. 23, 1938
Hitler dominant ruler in Europe
Adolf Hitler is the dominant ruler in Europe today, and never before in the five years of the Nazi regime has he been more firmly entrenched at home.
Studying him in the Kroll opera house yesterday, one realized that here was the man, above all others in Europe, who, by diplomacy and gestures of force has lifted himself into the saddle of middle Europe.
Events confirmed that impression when, in London, Foreign Minister Anthony Eden had resigned because of a British cabinet split over policy toward Germany. In Rome, Mussolini, Hitler’s ally, was silent, and his silence apparently gave consent to what the fuehrer had said. The people in the streets of Vienna had responded to the speech with loud “heils," and millions of ears were close to radios in the Balkans.
His black hair tumbling across his forehead, his arms waving, Hitler who was born outside the boundaries of Germany, had shouted; “In five years I have built up the German army. Nobody doubts that I am the leader of the reich."
Japan recalls high officers of army from war zone
Japan has recalled to Tokyo three of the highest officers of her entire military force in China, it was disclosed today — men who had been commanders in areas where conduct of Japanese troops had brought United States protests.
General Iwani Matsui, commander in chief of the Shanghai area, Lieutenant General Prince Yasuhiko Asaka, commander in chief of the Nanking area, and Lieutenant General Heisuke Yanagawa, commander in chief of the Hangchow area were the officers affected.
It was against incidents and Nanking and Hangchow that the United States protested in a note to the Japanese government Jan. 17.
More conservative Japanese long had been eager to see removal of Prince Asaka. On him they placed part of the blame for indiscipline of Japanese troops after the capture of Nanking.
Chinese raid Formosa
Chinese airplanes took the war to Japanese soil today with two raids on Formosa, the great Japanese island and troop base off the China coast.
Editor’s note: Formosa is now called Taiwan.
50 YEARS AGO
For the week ending
Feb. 23, 1963
Andrew Wiley: Trailblazer whose name has been lost
Many Central Oregonian trailblazers have been lost to history, their deeds forgotten, their explorations unrecorded, their names now virtually unknown.
One of these was Andrew Wiley. His role as a trailblazer was noted briefly when his son, Charles Wiley, a resident of the Redmond community since 1905, died recently at the age of 85.
Andrew Wiley was an early-day settler of Linn County. To the east was a challenging, heavily timbered divide. Wiley was a great hunter. On his hikes into the hills he discovered an Indian trail up the South Santiam River.
Wiley was interested in that trail, for reports indicated that beyond the high divide between Three Fingered Jack and Mount Washington was a fine grass country for cattle. Members of the lost “Gold Bucket Mine" wagon train had noticed the verdant land when they moved through the Prineville area in 1845, then veered north to bypass the Cascades.
Each year on hunting expeditions, Wiley made his way farther into the hills, up the South Santiam with its dense fir forests. Finally, accompanied by two companions, Wiley in 1859 crossed the summit and reached the present site of Sisters.
A roadside historical marker at Lost Prairie on the South Santiam Highway tells part of the Wiley story: “Lost Prairie was named by a group of Willamette Valley settlers who camped here in April 1859 while searching for a cattle trail over the Cascade Mountains to Central Oregon pasture. The expedition was led by Andrew Wiley. To reassure less stout hearted members who felt the party was lost, Wiley climbed a tree on a nearby mountain and was the first white man to view the Santiam Pass from the west side of the mountains. Wiley later served as chief locator for the Willamette Valley and Cascade Mountain Road project."
Andrew Wiley’s route over the Cascades from the west was for a time known as the Wiley Trail. Then came developments that were to erase the name of Wiley from the area. These included the ill-fated venture of T. Edgenton Hogg in the attempt to build a railroad over the Wiley Pass. The area quickly took the name “Hogg Pass," guarded by a volcanic monolith, Hogg Rock. The pioneer road which crossed the summit just to the east of Big Lake was known as the Santiam Pass.
The name of Andrew Wiley was scarcely known to the road builders in 1929 who constructed a modern highway approximately over the trail Wiley had blazed.
Andrew Wiley’s story is that of a pioneer Oregonian trailblazer and road builder whose name was lost to history.
25 YEARS AGO
For the week ending
Feb. 23, 1988
Hanlon’s job: Best of both worlds
Bill Hanlon once pondered whether he should become a lawyer or a wheat farmer, and he says his new job as Jefferson County district attorney is a chance to have the best of both occupations.
In a sense, becoming the chief prosecutor in a rural Central Oregon county known for its sprawling farms and ranches is a chance for Hanlon to go home again.
In an interview last week a few hours after the governor made his announcement, Hanlon talked about his roots in Central Oregon, his close ties to agriculture and his enthusiasm for his new job.
Hanlon was born in Medford, and his family moved to Bend when he was in junior high school. At Bend High School, Hanlon was a talented athlete, earning a total of eight varsity letters in football, basketball and track,
Hanlon was educated at the prestigious U.S. Air Force Academy and Linfield College. He ran track in college and earned bachelor’s degrees in political science and economics, graduating in 1972.
That same year his family purchased a ranch in northern Deschutes County, and Hanlon came home to Central Oregon to help run the operation. The Hanlons farmed a couple of hundred acres of wheat and hay and had a small cattle operation.
“I really enjoyed grain farming and during that time I spent a lot of time talking to people in Jefferson County about farming," recalled Hanlon. “For a while I thought I might stay with farming."
But a surprise summer freeze wiped out the family’s wheat crop one year and convinced Hanlon that he’d better get back to school. He studied law at the University of Oregon Law School, where he graduated in 1976.
Hanlon worked at jobs in Crook County, Lakeview and in private practice and moved back to Central Oregon in 1984.
Hanlon took a mid-life breather from 1984 to 1986, sending much of that time on his 30-foot sailboat “Vanellus." He took more than a year on a leisurely trip from the San Juan Islands to Mexico, and then on to Hawaii.
In the late summer of 1985, Hanlon sailed alone from Hawaii to Astoria. He journeyed more than 3,000 miles during the monthlong trip across the Pacific.
Hanlon was back in the courtroom by mid-1986 after joining the public defenders office of Crabtree & Rahmsdorff in Bend.
His appointment as district attorney in Jefferson County is the beginning of what Hanlon hopes will be a long career in the rural Central Oregon county.
