Tumalo Dam, once intended to bring agriculture to the Tumalo area, is a historic landmark.

Permit me to comment on the rosy picture of Bend as printed in the Jan. 1 article by Suzanne Roig. I have lived in Bend 81 years and worked for a time at Brooks Scanlon. The mills provided an adequate living for many, although not comparable to the higher wages some businesses are able to provide today. A drive through the Old Mill housing district will show a cross-section of the homes the mill workers lived in.

They were not as large as many of the mega mansions in Bend today, but I never heard anyone complain. Compare them to the new homes on the east side, all look-alikes and barren of native trees and yards. I don’t know of anyone who thought of the mill sites as “gritty,” barren or a “blight.”

The mills supported a large population and had a hospital for workers.

I recall that during my breaks, I would sit by the river and watch wildlife. I was not interrupted by thousands of tourists walking on the banks, or floating by.

We have traded the mill pollution of bark chips and soot for hundreds of pounds of garbage that are removed from the river each year. We have traded a quiet mill town for one that is “vibrant” with more than 15,000 visitors a day and terrible permanent traffic congestion. Most of the natural areas I enjoyed in my youth are paved.

I know the closed mills had to be replaced with a new economy. I never dreamed our leaders would exploit the natural beauty of the area by advocating relentless development and, in the process, destroy so much of what was good about Bend and making it unaffordable for many.

— Kyle Miller, Bend

Where does the score come from?

After reading all the articles in The Bulletin about Bend’s home energy score, nothing has been said about how assessors arrive at this score.

Do they climb in the homeowner’s attic to see if the insulation is in place and the right amount? How about the crawl space? Do they crawl around under the house looking for voids in the insulation?

Do they have scanners to check outside walls for full insulation? Do they close up the house for a pressure test?

Instead of having separate assessors, wouldn’t it be better for home inspectors (which most new homebuyers hire) be trained also as home energy assessors and let the homebuyer pay for this, if they really need the score?

— Robert Mortensen, Bend

The runway that was

I really enjoyed the recent article by Jeremy Dickman on the history of the making/failure of the abandoned reservoir near Tumalo. There is another small piece of history he might have included in his article. The then dry open, flat, expanse that existed behind the defunct dam provided a pretty good runway surface for airplanes. I remember in the late 1940s or early ‘50’s watching my father and others loading airplanes with insecticide on the “lake bed” behind the dam. This allowed “crop dusters” to serve the local farms from a closer distance, thus timelier and, I expect, at a lower cost. Exploring the “gatehouse” also provided a diversion from farm chores for local “youngins.”

— Charles Porter, Redmond

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