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

100 YEARS AGO

For the week ending

Nov. 29, 1914

Rogers says brighter days ahead for lumber

“We have seen the worst of the lumber industry. Henceforth there will be improvement.”

So said A.R. Rogers, of Minneapolis, this morning. Beside being one of the best known figures in the national lumber world, Mr. Rogers has the distinction of being reckoned “Crook County’s biggest tax payer,” its timber holdings here totaling about 60,000 acres.

“Everywhere there are signs of improvement in business,” said Mr. Rogers. “The Great War means much to us of America. It will give our commercial life a remarkable stimulus, at least temporarily. Whether or not we continue to prosper depends upon ourselves. And I think that with the unprecedented wave of economy, in private and business life, evidenced everywhere, we will come out in remarkably strong shape. This economy, coupled with great money-making possibilities while the war lasts and immediately after, will place us in a commanding position in world’s finances.”

Mr. Rogers arrived Monday and leaves tonight. Much of his visit was devoted to trips in the woods with his local representative, Paul Garrison.

Goose shooting is good this year around Bend

Goose shooting is good this year. Oh, very good. Especially on the river close to town. If you don’t believe it, ask Rene West. And if you’re not inclined to take his word, ask Nig Pringle.

Anyway, Rene shot six big geese on the river right beside the mill last week. Some folks say he was only a few yards from them at the time of the massacre, but the fact remains that he bagged ‘em.

The story commenced at Silver Lake. Last Spring a friend of Pringle’s down there secured a bunch of eggs from a goose nest and hatched them under a hen. About Thanksgiving time they were brought up to Pringle by a freighter — nice fat tame-wild geese, with their wings clipped. Nig kept them in his yard, which has a wire fence about it and a gate. But the other day he forgot to close the gate. So the geese departed and went swimming, for their clipped wings prevented flying. Then Rene saw the strays and decided a miracle had happened. But just after the execution was over Pringle happened along, and it is understood that he managed to get most of the geese back, dead.

75 YEARS AGO

For the week ending

Nov. 29, 1939

Runners leave for hill relay

Track Coach John G. Jones of the Bend High School and five cross country runners left early this morning for Portland where the Bend squad will participate in the annual Rocky Butte run, jointly sponsored this year by Hill Military Academy and Washington High School.

Lava Bears making the trip with Coach Jones were Leon Devereaux, only member of Bend’s squad of 1938 that placed 4th in the interscholastic division of the Pacific Coast competition; David Coleman, Derald Simonis, Paul Sullivan and Robert Russell.

The high school competition will take place tomorrow, when entries from 20 coast high schools will join in the cross country championships over the Rocky Butte course. In preparation for the Portland races, the Bend boys have been practicing for the past two months.

Practice has included some hill climbing, to get the young athletes in shape.

Last year Bend was the only out of Portland high school squad to place in the interscholastic division of the cross country championships.

Al Capone freed at Eastern pen

Scarface Al Capone, once the overlord of Chicago’s prohibition gangs, was whisked across the country in secret and released today from the federal government’s new model prison at Lewisburg, Pa.

Capone, who used to pay large sums for loud silk underwear, was dressed today in a cheap suit which the federal government gave to him as a released criminal. It was considered unlikely that he got the $10 usually given criminals to start life anew.

Broken in health, and tortured by mental aberrations produced by paresis, Capone was turned over to relatives.

Capone was not handcuffed as the train sped across the country. The Prison Bureau Director said “they did not have to worry about him.”

Federal officials said Capone was a “free man” but there was no doubt that they would keep their eye on the former gang leader to make certain that he did not take up his old business.

The brief announcement did not explain how Capone was brought east from California but it was stated that the prisoner traveled to Lewisburg by train.

50 YEARS AGO

For the week ending

Nov. 29, 1964

U.S. sends Mariner off on 325 million mile trip to Mars

The United States today sent a spacecraft equipped with a television camera speeding from an orbiting launcher on a 325 million mile voyage to spy on Mars and its puzzling “canals.”

The 575-pound Mariner-4 robe was rocketed into the heavens at 9:22 am EST after a flawless countdown.

The spacecraft is scheduled to complete its historic journey in 7½ months.

If all goes well, the probe will swoop within 7,000 to 10,000 miles of Mars next July 14. Its camera will peer through the thin Martian atmosphere to snap 22 pictures while its scientific instruments try to unlock some of the secrets of the planet.

Lapine is really La Pine (Editorial)

There is some confusion and general lack of consistency concerning the correct spelling of La Pine. Three different spellings of the small, southern Deschutes County town’s name are in general use.

State agencies (such as the one that prints the Oregon highway map) spell the name Lapine. Use of the spelling LaPine without a space between the first and second syllables, is not infrequent. The “1962 Directory of Post Offices,” published the United States Post Office Department, spells the name La Pine.

La Pine is the correct spelling. It was recommended by the Oregon Geographic Names Board at its meeting a year ago, after that spelling had been adopted by the U.S. Post Office Department.

When La Pine was founded in 1910 near the pioneer town of Rosland, the spelling of the name of the new village was generally used as LaPine, with the two words merged but with a capital “P” used.

In later years, the spelling became Lapine. It was variously spelled until the Post Office approved the La Pine spelling several years ago.

That spelling is now official.

25 YEARS AGO

For the week ending

Nov. 29, 1989

Resort remembers wagon train

It isn’t easy tracking down a lost wagon train, especially when the trail has had 130 years to grow old. Just ask David Danley. Danley, staff naturalist in Sunriver, had spent years searching the area for traces of the famous “Lost Wagon Train” of 1853, one of the legends of Oregon history.

He knew from historic diaries that the train of about 300 wagons passed through the area now known as Sunriver on its way to the Willamette Valley.

But the exact route remained a mystery.

“People were looking for a path,” Danley said. If there had been trees there then, that would have been appropriate.”

Instead, however, Danley spotted the trail while inspecting an aerial photograph of Sunriver. The photo showed a narrow avenue of lodgepole pine trees running northeast to southwest from Fort Rock Park across Sunriver to East Cascades Circle No. 11, heading toward the meadows along the Deschutes River.

Historic surveyor’s notes and an inspection of growth rings in the pines confirmed Danley’s theory: the passage of dozens of wagons had compacted the area’s dry pumice soil, causing it to retain moisture that allowed lodgepole pine seedlings to take root.

“What we’re looking at is the row of trees, not a path or trail,” Danley said. “When you see it from the air, it immediately makes sense.”

Danley and a group of residents met at the site Wednesday to dedicate a plaque made by C.S. “Red” Palmer to commemorate the wagon train’s passage.

The story began on Aug. 28 of 1853. Elijah Elliott led a 20 wagon train out of Vale in search of a direct route across eastern Oregon to the Willamette Valley.

After a dry and difficult trip across the High Desert, the first wagons reached the Deschutes River near present-day Bend on Oct. 7.

As scouts searched for the route over the Willamette Pass, more and more wagons appeared on the Deschutes until 300 wagons that had followed the Elliott train had arrived.

The wagon train moved south, but with little food and the prospect of winter storms in the near future, its leaders decided to send a scout party across the Cascades to the Willamette Valley with a plea for help.

Pat Erlandson of Sunriver remembers stories of the trip told by her grandmother, Lucinda Leonard. She was 9 in 1853 when her mother and father, Mary and Joseph Leonard, and their four children traveled with the Elliott party.

As Erlandson’s grandmother recalled it, the trip across eastern Oregon nearly cost Elliott his life.

“At one point, a group of men were preparing to hang Mr. Elliott over all the consternation, because they were lost,” Erlandson said. “My grandmother told how her father and some other men talked them out of it.”

A scout reached the valley, spread the word of the immigrants plight and sparked a massive rescue effort that saw Lane County residents form a 23-wagon party and head into the mountains.

On the other side of the mountains, meanwhile, Elliott’s wagon train was struggling toward the mountain pass. They met the first members of the rescue party on Oct. 19 near Crescent Lake.

From that point, the rescuers helped the Elliott wagon train make the difficult passage down the middle fork of the Willamette River to Lane County. The new settlers quadrupled the population of the southern Willamette Valley.