Compiled by Don Hoiness from archived copies of The Bulletin at Des Chutes County Historical Society.

100 YEARS AGO

For the week ending

Dec. 5, 1915

Check artists make big haul

Eight prominent Bend businessmen were victimized late Monday afternoon to the total amount of $215.25 by check artists who called at their places of business after banking hours with checks to which the names of George Millican and Sam Roebacher, of Millican, were signed. Of the eight checks presented, seven bore Mr. Millican’s name. They ranged in various amounts from $13 to $41.

The merchants, who were victims of the forgers, believe that there were three persons operating in Bend for a short time Monday afternoon, as each one says that the checks were presented between four and six o’clock.

One merchant says that he cashed two of the Millican checks and one of them was presented by a woman. The merchants also say that the persons who passed the checks were well acquainted with conditions in and about Bend and particularly with Mr. Millican. This fact leads the merchants to believe that the men have been residents in the vicinity of Millican.

In view of this situation several of the merchants, who honored the checks, left this morning with Deputy Sheriff Theodore Aune for the Millican country to obtain evidence on the matter. Mr. Millican, the merchants say, has been purchasing a considerable amount of hay from homesteaders in the vicinity of his ranch, and it is believed that somebody has been working on his signature with some of the checks given in payment for the hay.

All the merchants say that their suspicions with regard to Mr. Millican’s signature were not aroused, as the signatures to the bogus checks were, to their knowledge, identical with Mr. Millican’s. The forgeries were detected at the First National Bank when the first bad check came in.

It was ascertained at once that the checks were not genuine and they were not honored. During the morning hours eight of these bad checks were presented for payment.

Upon comparing notes last night all the merchants came to the conclusion that there were at least two and possibly three men engaged in the work, and that they have been in and about Bend and are well acquainted with Mr. Millican. They have accurate descriptions of the men. Almost all of them say that a small amount of merchandise was purchased for which the checks were presented in payment.

It was also found that the writing bore evidence that two persons did the signing of the checks and used common names as payees. The checks were all written with pencil.

Immediately upon finding that the checks were bogus an effort was made to ascertain whether men answering the descriptions of the forgers had left Bend by train, but the trainmen say that they have not seen anyone of such description.

75 YEARS AGO

For the week ending

Dec. 5. 1940

Bears leave for Medford contest

Bend high school students gave their far-famed Lava Bears two rounds of rousing cheers as the Friday assembly opened this morning, then sent the Bears over the mountains to meet Medford for the first official state high school football championship in the history of Oregon.

The Bears stood in a line in front of the gymnasium auditorium stage, accepted the tribute from their fellow students, then filed out to their bus led by Pat Metke, student body president. They will meet a powerful Medford team on its home field.

Bend turns out to welcome championship Lava Bears

Bearing a huge trophy emblematic of the 1940 high school football championship of Oregon, Bend’s Lava Bears, victors over Medford 20 to 7, returned home yesterday to receive the boisterous acclaim of a happy city and to join in an impromptu parade.

At the rally the state trophy for the second time in two days was “officially presented” to husky, smiling Jim Byers, who captained the Bears in the final and most brilliant game of the state championship series.

The first presentation took place Saturday evening in front of the packed, but rather silent Medford grandstand. On that occasion, Byers had hardly accepted the trophy before he was lifted on the shoulders of his fellow players and carried from the field.

The one-sided score of the contest hardly tells the full story of the strength of Coach Bill Bowerman’s powerful Tigers or of the ferocity with which the Tigers attempted to stop the march of the unstoppable Bears.

The Bend line, one of the greatest ever to perform on an Oregon high school gridiron, failed to yield.

50 YEARS AGO

For the week ending

Dec. 5, 1965

Famous movie horse victim of old age, by Phil F. Brogan

“Mac,” a proud Morgan Palomino who has appeared on the silver screens of movie theaters across the United States, is dead, victim of old age. He was 26 years old. The fine Palomino was owned by Mr. and Mrs. Dean Hollinshead, of Bend.

“Mac,” whose full name was MacArthur, made his first movie appearance a number of years ago in “Canyon Passage.” The locale was the Diamond Lake country. Mac’s rider was a movie star, Susan Hayward.

Friendly, well-trained “Mac” also appeared in “The Indian Fighter,” which was filmed in the Bend country. He had a role in “Have Gun, Will Travel” sequences filmed in this area by the Richard Boone company.

Last July, “Mac” made his first appearance on the “legitimate stage” when “The Music Man” was presented here under the direction of Donald Goodwin. “Mac” was a real actor in that production, which proved to be his farewell to theater goers. Led on the stage by Hollinshead, “Mac” looked over the audience, decided it was friendly, and continued his act.

At the end of the show, when players took a bow, “Mac” was led onto the stage again, and received a great ovation. “Mac” appeared in the Wells Fargo scene of “The Music Man.”

The big palomino was well known in Bend for many years. Occasionally when snow covered the ground, “Mac” was hitched to a sleigh for a prance through the drifts.

A picture of “Mac” appeared on the front page of a feature section of the Oregonian last Sunday. Admiring “Mac” in that picture was one of his many loyal fans, Reub Long of Fort Rock.

Popeye to grace spinach cans

After 37 years fighting to “de finish, ‘cuz I eats me spinach,” Popeye, the comic strip strongman, finally will grace a spinach can.

The Steele Canning Co. of Springdale, Ark. , announced an agreement Friday with Popeye’s owners, King Features Syndicate, to depict the “sailor man” on its labels beginning Jan. 1.

E.C. Segar created Popeye in 1928 as a minor character in his Thimble Theater comic strip. But the muscular sailor caught on and soon became the hero of millions of children — and the spinach industry.

Every time Popeye (hastily gulping a can of spinach) beat a bully and saved a damsel in distress (usually was a dubious femme fatale named Olive Oyl), the industry’s sales soared.

This is the first time Popeye’s sales talents will be put to work for a particular brand of spinach. And Joe Steele, president of the company, has ordered his eight plants in northwest Arkansas and northeast Oklahoma to gear for a sharp rise in sales.

25 YEARS AGO

For the week ending

Dec. 5, 1990

“Sagebrush Ocean” author wins annual Chiles honor

Stephen Trimble, author of “The Sagebrush Ocean,” received the $10,000 Earle A. Chiles award from The High Desert Museum in Portland Wednesday night.

“Stephen Trimble has written one of the most comprehensive and scientifically reliable volumes on the Great Basin to come along in years,” said High Desert Museum President Don Kerr. “It infuses even the casual reader with a new dimension of understanding and appreciation for this vast, resource-rich territory.”

It has been described as a personal tribute to the world of the West’s High Desert with prose reminiscent of the writing of Oregon naturalist Barry Lopez. Describing the Alvord Desert of southeast Oregon, Trimble writes, “Jackrabbits leap from underfoot and bounce off over the next rise. In this treeless world they seem huge — as big as antelope.”

Trimble said his interest in the region blossomed during his childhood when his geologist father gave him impromptu natural history lessons during travels though Idaho and Oregon.

“I grew up believing that the thing to do was to learn as much as you could about everything,” Trimble said.

Trimble took eight years to learn about the Great Basin region in preparation for the writing of The Sagebrush Ocean, often traveling the region by foot and living out of the back of his pickup truck. He also pored through volume after volume of previously published information on the region.

Perhaps even more remarkable, Trimble took all the photographs that fill his book, including the cover shot of a High Desert landscape at dusk under a tiny crescent moon.

“I care about wild landscapes of the West,” he said. “That’s what I care about the most, and the Great Basin is the largest section of wild landscape left in the West.”

The Chiles award is named for the late Earle A. Chiles, an Oregon businessman and philanthropist, and is funded by the Chiles Foundation of Portland.

The High Desert Museum is located six miles south of Bend off U.S. Highway 97.