100 years ago

For the week ending

May 25, 1924

Phone system changes made as city grows

As the result of work now being carried on in this city by the Pacific Telephone and Telegraph Co. Bend’s “outside” telephone system is being repaired, improved and renovated at a cost of approximately $6,000, according to information obtained from J.L. Gaither, local manager of the company. The crew of 10 men will be at work on the lines in Bend for about 30 days yet.

This piece of work is meeting with the approval of persons interested in city beautification. Telephone facilities are being extended to parts of the city which previously were barely tapped by lines. It is estimated that between 5,000 and 6,000 feet of new cable, each cable containing from 50 to 200 pair of wires, will have been placed when the present work is completed.

Woman admits she sold pint

Bend’s bootleggers are losing their morale. When the police made their third arrest within a week on a liquor charge today taking Margaret Millak into custody for selling a pint of moonshine, Margaret admitted the charge, but wanted to know why the police were always picking on her and letting the others off.

“You’re letting some of these people get by for five or six years and run the town,” said Margaret.

“That’s what the others say about you,” said Chief Hanson. “When we arrested that woman last week, she asked us why we didn’t go and arrest Margaret Millak. She accused us of protecting you.”

“I know,” Margaret replied. “I’m going to lick her this afternoon.”

“And when we arrested George Francis yesterday he had the same kind of story,” the chief continued.

Margaret agreed that selling to a young boy was a bad crime. Recorder Louis Bennett fined her $400, it being a second offense. Margaret said she would have to serve it out in jail. Bennett told her that would mean about seven months.

Cleanup starting at Shevlin Park

Under the supervision of Fire Chief Tom Carlon, a crew of four men with a team is busy cleaning up the entrance to Shevlin Memorial park, removing logs and refuse and beautifying the place in general.

The work is being done under instructions from C.P. Niswonger, chairman of the public properties committee of the city council, and is practically the first work to be done on the park, donated to the city by The Shevlin-Hixon Company nearly four years ago.

Think beaver exterminated

Fear that the three month open season of last winter has resulted in the virtual extermination of all beaver in the Deschutes country is expressed by local sportsmen who have been looking for some trace of the water loving animal when out on fishing trips.

In past years beaver have been comparatively plentiful in the river within the city limits of Bend, but people who in former years watched the animals playing in the water after sunset, and at times coming out on lawns bordering the river, say they have not seen a beaver this spring.

Forest service men who have been out in the woods considerably this spring report they have seen no sign of the animals or of fresh cuttings.

75 years ago

For the week ending

May 25, 1949

Three million seedlings to be added to nursery

The newly-established Bend pine nursery, east of town on Butler road, was a scene of considerable activity this week as a crew under the supervision of Walter A. Engstrom, nurseryman for the United States forest service, planted seeds from which will grow 3,000,000 pines. Seeds planted in the new nursery were gathered from many parts of the Pacific northwest, and the tiny trees that will grow from the seeds eventually will be available for transplanting in pine forests of the region.

Under an arrangement effective for the first time this year, all pine seedlings for the northwest region will be grown in the local nursery. Formerly, pines were grown at the Wind River, Wash., nursery.

In addition to seeds planted in the local nursery, 200,000 two-year-old pines grown from Idaho seed at Wind River have been transplanted ere. These will be available for transplanting in Idaho forests following a year’s growth here.

The new Bend plant, used for the first time last year, is now the major pine nursery in the North Pacific region. In 1948, a million and a half seeds were planted, but adverse weather conditions, including the coldest winter on record, apparently resulted in a heavy winter kill. A wet spring last year and a heavy hail storm were also factors that made life hard for the young pines.

In connection with the big nursery, a headquarters plant is being built up, with the contract let this week for construction of seed-extracting plant. In the near future, an office building will be added to the structures now finished or being built.

Kenwood PTA picnic proves popular event

Nearly all of the 90 seventh graders at Kenwood school attended the first annual seventh grade picnic sponsored by the Kenwood PTA, yesterday at Shevlin Park. The children left school at 1:30 p.m. in school buses, and were returned at about 5:30. The outdoor program included games and group activities. A meal of wieners, buns, potato chips and pop, topped off with Dixie cups donated by Medo-Land creamery was served.

Elk Lake Resort opening planned

Myron H. Symons, proprietor of the Elk lake resort, left for the lake this morning, accompanied by his son in law and daughter, Mr. and Mrs. John Edwards. Symons said he planned to open the resort by Memorial Day weekend and would take in members of his summer staff later in the week.

This is Symons’ third trip into Elk lake in recent weeks. He reported that it is now possible to drive to the Lava lake turnoff, over the South Century drive. Symons plans to shift his fleet of boats to the south end of the lake for the Memorial day holidays. Ice disappeared from the lake this past week.

50 years ago

For the week ending

May 25, 1974

Hospital site appeals to Day

Early this year, Deschutes County commissioners placed the responsibility of formulating plans for a new County jail on the shoulders of Jay Day, county building director. Since then, Day has had his eye on St. Charles Memorial Hospital buildings, to be vacated when the new hospital on Neff Road in east Bend is completed next year. Day, who was involved with the construction of the new Washington County jail in Hillsboro, now says the hospital facilities could serve as a county courthouse “until 2000 and then some,”

Day emphasized he thinks the county could save money by moving all county offices into the hospital building. He said he thinks the remodeling of the hospital could be done for “around $500,000.”

He said the estimated cost of constructing a new jail and court facility on Lafayette Avenue near the present courthouse would be “in the neighborhood of $2 million.” His argument that the use of the hospital would be the most economical of the alternatives facing the county hinges on the successful trade of county land for the hospital. If the county moves into the old hospital, the current courthouse and annex could be sold.

Although proceeds from the sale must be split with the various taxing districts in the county, Day said the county could use its share to help pay for the remodeling of the hospital.

Day said all of the interior walls in the hospital could be removed. He said all the plaster ceilings in the structure could easily be replaced with suspended acoustic ceilings. The hospital facilities include the three-story main building (constructed in 1951), a one story medical wing (which Day helped construct in 1958), and the original three-story hospital building (constructed in 1921). Also included would be the convent, chapel and garage. Day said the convent, chapel and garage could be transformed into work-release and juvenile detention facilities because they are isolated from the main hospital facilities. Those three buildings and a a stone wall surround a courtyard which could be made into an enclosed exercise area, Day suggested.

The old original building could not be made to conform with the uniform building code and would have to come down, Day said. He said the area where the old building is now located could be made into a parking lot. A covered walkway, already in existence, extends form the old hospital building to the new facilities.

Day recommends the basement for the jail and the third floor of the main building for courtroom facilities, the district attorney’s offices and the law library. If the county doesn’t need all the room the remainder of the facility could be rented out as private offices.

He added he hoped city government and possibly some state and federal agencies would be interested in using hospital space.

25 years ago

For the week ending

May 25, 1999

New exhibit features a Plateau sweat lodge

There was a lot of construction at the High Desert Museum early this week. Buzzing saws and the steady thwack of compressor-powered nail guns could be heard all over the new wing, which will open in September. Paneling was going up. Wires were going in. And history was being remembered.

Crouched down in a corner, working in the shadow cast by a man who was up on a ladder using a rechargeable drill, Wilfred Jim was building a sweat lodge, and he wasn’t using a single power tool.

Jim is a religious leader from the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs. His sweat lodge is exactly the kind of artifact the new Plateau Indians wing of the museum will showcase in its first show, ‘By Hand Through Memory.”

Using wood, string, canvas and an old blanket, Jim fashioned the small lodge in an hour and a half using modern materials to practice an ancient art. The half-dome structure is about four feet in diameter and three feet high. The frame is made of tree branches lashed together with string. The roof is made of the old blanket and the canvas.

If this were a fully functioning model like the one Jim has at home, stones heated by a fire would be used to generate steam inside.

“The sweat lodge was for a cleansing of the body, the mind and that. It was like a purification rite,” explained Jim, who likes to use a sweat lodge several times a week. “You used it to clean your body from all the impurities that you had been building up. You can bathe day after day and never get all those things out of your body. If you’ve ever been in a sauna you’d know what I mean. It cleanses you deep.”

Construction materials for the lodges can include sod, dirt, tarps, blankets or animal skins- whatever materials are at hand.

Jim said he learned how to build a lodge from his father, who learned it from his father and son on. Jack Cooper, of The High Desert Museum, said the exhibit will highlight the old traditions and how they are handed down to modern generations.

“It’s about how people live today, incorporating their history into their lives. And it’s about that history,” Cooper said.

“It’s about how they could keep that history alive today, after so many things were taken away from them. “

In the next week, a larger tule mat lodge will also be constructed for the new wing. The larger lodge will greet visitors as they enter the new exhibit.