Compiled by Don Hoiness from archived copies of The Bulletin at the Des Chutes Historical Museum.

100 YEARS AGO

For the week ending

Aug. 16, 1914

Lay concrete at big new water reservoir

Laying concrete in the Bend Water Light & Power Company’s new reservoir west of the river began this morning, and Manager Feley estimates that by the 15th the big tank will be completed.

Its dimensions are 45 by 45 feet with a height of 11 feet. An indication of the first class manner in which the work is being done is the fact that an iron roof or cover will fit tight over the reservoir, making it impossible for any animals to get into the water or material of any kind to contaminate it.

The cost of the new equipment is about $5000. The tank will hold 100,000 gallons, and will be used in connection with the present tank whose capacity is 30,000 gallons. Connecting the new reservoir 1200 feet of ten inch pipe has been laid.

Work started July 3, and since then an average of 16 men have been employed with M.J. Danielson in charge. The company is contemplating other improvements, among them the concreting of their electric poles in town.

The installation of the big new tank; triple the capacity of the old, is regarded as most significant. It being believed by many that such an investment would not be made at this time were not the men behind the company sure that mill construction is due to start forthwith, assuring a greatly increased demand for water coincident with the enlargement of the town. It is pointed out that the present tank is really capable of satisfactorily caring for the needs of the present community and is in good shape.

Road improvement from town east progresses

The road improvement work on Greenwood Avenue, and the opening of the new road east along the south side of Pilot Butte, is progressing rapidly.

Upon its completion Bend will have a new and greatly improved entrance from the east, connecting directly with the Bear Creek and Burns roads.

The grade on Greenwood, just beyond the city limits, has been eliminated and from there to the butte the work is about completed, except for cindering. About two weeks work will be required to finish the new road at the base of the butte. W.H. May has been in direct charge of the work, with County Commissioner R.H. Hayley supervising it.

This new route make a straight road due east from town to the segregation and the easterly roads. It is somewhat shorter than the present roads, and far superior in point of grades and in freedom from rocks and turns. The cost of the work undertaken, including some that was done just north of town, is about $7000, probably $5000 of which went for labor. From the city limits the new work extends east about two miles.

Cindering the road west from the butte will be done, but probably the final touches will not be given the work until there is a good rain.

75 YEARS AGO

For the week ending

Aug. 16, 1939

The scrap iron institute (Editorial)

A recent editorial in this column regarding the shipment of scrap iron to Japan has drawn from the institute of scrap iron and steel a letter defending the scrap iron business and asserting that the steel into which the scrap goes is not a war-like commodity. All that the letter says may be quite true. It still gives no answer to the question of the sale and shipment of scrap to Japan which was the specific matter touched on by the editorial.

If the institute wishes to make a case it should discuss specifically the amount of scrap going to Japan and uses to which it is put. Has it any doubt that it is this scrap Japan is using in the promotion of the Chinese war? Perhaps it thinks that there isn’t any war or if there is one that Japan is in the right.

Tin lizzies to compete Sunday

Central Oregon’s first tin lizzie derby will be held in Bend tomorrow on O’Donnell field.

The tin lizzie derby is to be a 200 lap affair, with all model “T” cars to be started at the same time. The first five to cross the finish line will be in the money.

Taking part in the derby will be cars of ancient vintage, but all of the same model, from Lane and Deschutes counties. The Lane County fleet will reach here over the McKenzie Pass early tomorrow.

Bend people recently saw their first midget auto competition, but tomorrow’s derby will be radically different from that in which the speed cars took part.

West side drivers sweep all places in Bend tin lizzie derby

West side cars, moved over the McKenzie Pass in most cases under their own power, swept all money places in the tin lizzie derby. Joe Mock of Eugene took first, Wallace Reid of Salem took second, Clyde Holleman of Creswell took third and Pierre Jepson of Dexter was fourth.

Only one accident marred the races. Early in the 200 lap contest, John Showalter of Junction City, was hurled from the old machine after striking a bump. The driverless car continued and crashed through the north end of the O’Donnell field fence and finally came to a stop. Showalter was taken to the St. Charles hospital where it was found that his injuries were slight. It took almost four hours for the cars to cover 200 laps.

50 YEARS AGO

For the week ending

Aug. 16, 1964

Wolf-girl legend being filmed in Bend country

A slim, bare-footed girl, wearing a wolf-skin sarong, leaped over a log in the forest, a big white wolf at her side. There in the clearing lay a man, one arm and one foot gripped in wolf traps.

The girl froze, terrified, for she had lived in the woods since early childhood, and could not remember having seen an animal like the one on the ground. The wolf bared his teeth, bayed, sniffed the man, then disappeared into the forest to summon help from the pack.

Meanwhile the girl pulled her knife from its scabbard, ran to the man and threw herself on him in a wild attack. The man and the girl locked in frenzied struggle, and the man succeeded in wrestling the knife from the girl’s grip, with his free hand.

Then he smoothed her long hair, and spoke to her. “Myra!” he said carefully, forming the word with exaggerated motion of his mouth. “Try to remember. Myra! Myra Wade!”

The girl touched her lips, and in a whisper, tried to produce a similar sound. Then she heard her wolf whimper and ran off to find him.

“Cut!” cried the assistant director, Wilson Shyer. “Save it.” “Take five,” said Joe DeMartini, second assistant.

“That was the toughest scene in the picture,” remarked Frank McDonald of “The Valley of the White Wolf,” on location 20 miles from Bend.

There were comments about the form-revealing “mutation mink” worn by the 22-year-old leading lady, Linda Saunders. Someone asked Adam West, the leading man, where he got his tapered western woodsman’s shirt. “Kirk Douglas gives me all his old ones,” he quipped.

The scene that had been completed was a crucial part of a legend that Unicorn Productions is doing as a 90-minute full-color kid picture. It is set in the North woods, and deals with a girl who is found at age of 17, after spending ten years in the wilds, in the company of friendly wolves. Her parents had been killed by a bear, on a scientific exploration.

Earlier Adam and Ted Marcuse, who plays the villainous trapper, had slugged it out before the cameras.

Local people working with the film are teamsters Art Hopper, Ike Stanford, Vernon Peck and Chuck Ridderbusch.

25 YEARS AGO

For the week ending

Aug. 16, 1989

Threshing bee harvests memories of times past

Men working with the same kind of equipment and horses they farmed with in the early part of this century were the centerpiece of the annual Dufur Threshing Bee Saturday and Sunday.

The bee started in 1971 by Everett Metzentine of Wamic and Bob DePriest of Dufur to keep alive some early farming ways.

Metzentine still farms with his Belgian draft horses and is a recognized authority on wheel-wrighting, which he demonstrates.

To show how horse-drawn equipment once was used, the committee reserves five acres of standing grain to be harvested.

While wood was being split to stoke the 1911 Altman Taylor 16 horsepower steam engine that generates power to operate the thresher, Leonard Lutji and his three horse team of Belgian draft horses were making the rounds of the grain field. The 71-year-old held the reins to guide Duke, Daisy and Bambi, hitched to a vintage grain binder.

DePriest remembered working on the crew of the Friend Threshing Co. of Friend, which now is a ghost town south of Dufur.

“Everything is air conditioned and has a radio now. They’ve got a soft life,” he said about recent day farmers. “We worked out in the heat.”

“But,” he added, “they can cut and bale as much hay in one day now as I did in my entire life.”

There were other things, also, to see at the bee, such as the historic Balch Hotel and Log Cabin Museum, a display of new and old quilts and a vintage style show and melodrama.

Beth McCurdy, who handled publicity for the bee, said the variety of events brought an estimated 2,000 people to Dufur during the two-day event, held annually on the second weekend in August.