Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley
Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley
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DAYTON - Kevin Carson must have been about 12 when his parents introduced him to books about Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce. He devoured the l ike s of "Hear Me My Chiefs" by Lucullus Mc- Whorter and "I Will Fight No More Forever" by Merril Beal. Growing up in a household that admired the Native leader and sympathized with his plight as the last holdout of his tribe, the irony of his own ancestry wasn't lost on the teenager. As the great great great grandson of Dayton Volunteer Lieutenant Levi...
DAYTON - Imagine downloading a music album in five seconds or a one-hour TV show in half a minute at home or the library. Or picture going to Dayton General Hospital and having your doctor share your X-rays with another medical expert in Walla Walla or Spokane so you don't have to drive all the way there. Such conveniences aren't too far into the future because plans are in the works to make Waitsburg and Dayton stops on a new fiber optic super highway that will bring high-speed broadband to rural communities throughout the state. Some compare...
WAITSBURG - By the time this edition of the newspaper comes out, Coppei Coffee will be open or be just about to have its soft opening. Our grand opening, as we reported last week, is scheduled to coincide with the openings of Betty's Diner and the Anchor Bar on Classic Auto Show weekend this Friday and Saturday. As part of our continuing introduction of Coppei Coffee, we thought we might discuss our menu and go over some espresso terms. With the evolution of espresso culture in our country, it m...
DAYTON - Harvest is barely underway and it's still a month before the new school year starts, but in the Touchet Valley it's never too early to start talking about upcoming high school sports. The 2011-2012 season will see some big changes for students, parents and coaches who meet in Dayton this Thursday and in Waitsburg on Aug. 15 to prepare for fall sports. The biggest shift at the top comes from the resignation of Jack Smiley as Athletic Director for Prescott High School after two decades...
DAYTON - It isn't too often that you can sit at a fine-linen banquet table outdoors enjoying the farm-fresh cuisine of a Whitehouse Crawford chef one day and get your paper plate piled high with some of the best chuck wagon chuck in the west the next. Yet, that was my culinary journey two weeks ago. I attended the four-course natural gourmet dinner hosted by the international Outstanding In The Field group at the Monteillet Fromagerie on Wednes- day. On Friday, we were in line for the chuck...
HUNTSVILLE - Zooming by on Highway 12, it's easy to miss the unassuming signs that mark the county line. "Entering Columbia County" reads the one going east. "Entering Walla Walla County" greets drivers going west. Most motorists pay them scant attention. But not businessman John Palmer. The owner of the new Ace Landscaping nursery, who barely needs binoculars to read the Walla Walla county sign, says it spells unfair competition to him, at least until Columbia County officials amend their...
WAITSBURG - More than 100 family members and local friends of Dennis Nostrant showed up for a dinner and silent auction at the fairgrounds Saturday, hoping to give the father of two a "second chance" at life, as his sister Susan Skeeters put it. The event raised more than $6,000 for Nostrant's transplant fund. The engineer, once a bar owner in Dayton and a longtime former resident of Waitsburg, needs a liver transplant to survive his late 50s. About one year ago, he discovered he has cirrhosis a...
DAYTON - Federal, state and local law enforcement officials on Monday seized 2,000 marijuana plants with a street value of $3 million from a grow in the upper Tucannon River drainage in the Umatilla National Forest after they arrested a suspect at a nearby location last week. Santiago Orozco-Contreras, 41, a Mexican national with a last known address in the Tri-Cities, was booked into Columbia County jail on Thursday on suspicion of possession of a firearm and of manufacturing marijuana. The arrest was made in the same general area of the...
DAYTON - Susan Hosticka always wanted to do a "bee beard" to prove the hard-working insects are really quite gentle and harmless despite their reputation to the contrary. Late last month, during a field day for the state's beekeepers association at Washington State University, she finally had her Fear Factor moment when 4,000 bees crawled and buzzed around her shoulders, neck and head. "Not a single sting," said the co-owner of Octopus Garden Honey on South Touchet Road near Dayton. "It kind of...
PRESCOTT - Last summer, a Canadian bicycle rider making her way across the country stopped in Waitsburg. Being from the wheat belt in the flat-as-a-pancake province of Saskatchewan, she remarked on the pitch of the wheat fields in the hills around the Touchet Valley. "Our farmers wouldn't know what to do with that," she said about the challenge of cultivating such steep terrain. Growing wheat in the rolling Palouse has never been easy. There's not enough rainfall for an annual crop on higher...
DAYTON - Jitters may be closed, but the Underwoods remain on Main. Scott and Yara Underwood, who started Jitters more than a year ago, closed the coffee shop at the end of May citing an overload of work for their young family. But the household still needed a place to relocate their PC Solutions operations, which had been in the back of the building, so they got the store front that's popularly known as the "Snowflake" building. "This is the first space we've set up exactly how we wanted," said...
WAITSBURG - The Travel Section of the Seattle Times has selected the roads in the Waitsburg-Dayton area as one of the best five routes in the state for riding or driving. In a piece called "Five Roads To Nowhere: The Best Of Washington's Boonies," guide book author Mike McQuaide selected " the roly-poly Dr. Seuss-esque hills surrounding charming Waitsburg and Dayton in the southeast corner of the state" as one of his favorite paddling and wheeling loops. The others include Bad- ger Mountain-Waterville northeast of Wenatchee; Tanasket-Oroville n...
DAYTON - Former Columbia County Sheriff 's Deputy Mark Franklin violated three aspects of his employer's policies and procedures, a misstep that would have triggered his suspension if he were still working in that capacity, Sheriff Walt Hessler said Tuesday. Franklin resigned in early June pending an investigation by the Asotin County Sheriff's Office into allegations that he conducted himself less than professionally during an incident at and near the Midway convenience store and fueling station in Waitsburg in February. Investigators, who...
Heart BEAT About Needs & Good Deeds T HORNTON, Wash. - Dennis Nostrant had not been feeling well all day. It was April 7, 2010. As an engineer for Hardcon Co based in Spokane, he was getting together with county officials, engineers, contractors and subs for a bridge construction project near Kettle Falls in Stevens County. But when it came time for the site meeting, he had to step behind one of the pickup trucks to throw up. He was shocked to see it was mostly blood. His liver had stopped...
Editor's Note: This is the second in an occasional series about Columbia County Health System serving patients in the Dayton and Waitsburg areas. The series will focus on changes and developments since last year's management study and review. WAITSBURG - The night after Jeff Monyak filed his elections paperwork to run for a seat on the health district board of commissioners, he cal led incumbent Jack Otterson on the phone at home. He didn't know Otterson personally, but knew the reputation of...
DAYTON - When you hear Bobbi and Barney Chambers talk about Sophie, Cleo, Denny, Lone Star and Superdude, you'd think they're talking about a circus family of seven that's not getting enough quality time together. " We don't see them enough," Bobbi Jo Chambers says about her loved ones. "We're putting on too many of these shows." But the couple from Cottonwood, Idaho, a town about two and a half hours from Dayton, is actually pining after more time with their show mules, some of which they've had for almost a decade. It's unlikely the tan and c...
WALLA WALLA - Former Waitsburg resident Adam Hermanns was sentenced late last week to five months in Walla Walla County Jail as part of the first of several cases against him in Superior Court. Two more trials that could lead to much longer sentences await Hermanns, the first of which begins on Wednesday, July 13. The second has been set for July 18. Hermanns, who pleaded guilty to the charge of theft in the second degree last month for taking automotive parts from the Waitsburg property of Todd and Beth Ann Wood on Jan. 21 this year, was...
WALLA WALLA - On a trip to the south of France in the late 1990s, Marvin Wood saw Petanque played for the first time. In the late afternoon, the men would come out to the sun-splashed gravel courts under shade trees in the parks or along the boulevards in the villages near Marseille and toss their boules after a little pilot ball, or jack, then compete fiercely to make their steel balls cozy up to it. The game seemed social and leisurely yet fascinating because of its demand on hand-eye...
DAYTON - When Yance Yost asked his friend and gallery owner Claire Johnston if she might be interested in placing one of his pieces in the jimgermanbar, which she runs with her husband, the answer was "no." Yost dropped his head in disappointment. He didn't think that his piece, a wired collage of empty picture frames accompanied by a poem about the images that "used to lie inside," "sucked that bad." Then he realized Johnson hadn't finished answering his question. "But you can have two months...
WAI T SBURG - When they bought thei r Keystone Montana 5th wheel in September, Lynn and Paul Mantz-Powers knew it would be months before they'd retire. But they were so excited about the prospect of hitting the road and adopting a new nomadic lifestyle this summer that they practically moved out of their adjacent family home on Bolles Road and into their 400-squarefoot travel trailer. "Trailer" doesn't actually captures their new abode, which comes with a shower, bathroom, living room, dining...
WAITSBURG - Two Waitsburg-area residents have thrown their hat in the ring for the city's library manager's position. The applicants for the job vacated by the resignation of Su Alexander last month are Heather Hay-Baker and Rosie Warehime. The Board of the Weller Public Library is expected to meet later this month to go over the applications and move the hiring process forward. Alexander left the position late last month, citing personal reasons. Hay- Baker, who lives with her family between...
WAITSBURG - Farmers in the Touchet Valley are predicting their harvest this year will be at least a week later than usual with fields in the Prescott and Waitsburg areas ready by the third week of July and in Dayton by early August. "Almost every farmer coming in says they'll be seven to ten days late," said Matt Weber, an agronomist with the McGregor Co.'s Waitsburg branch, which supplies them with farm chemicals. Concerned at first with the possible spread of rust, growers now welcome the somewhat cooler June temperatures that allow the...
WAITSBURG - The $5,000 grant from the Oregon Community Foundation, the charitable arm of Cycle Oregon, couldn't have come at a better time for Waitsburg's Main Street. The young deciduous trees planted in the sidewalk a few years ago didn't do so well this year, so the colorful flower baskets and flowers added to the street lights and planters are bringing some needed cheer to the downtown area. "The flowering trees took a hit from last November's cold snap and the bizarre spring we've had,"...
DAYTON - If you noticed how some Touchet Valley store fronts this weekend carried two posters promoting a farmers' market in Dayton, you weren't alone and you weren't seeing double. A town that has struggled to support one farmers' market now has two: the old Dayton Farmers Market and the new Dayton Saturday Market. The good news, thanks to the Dayton City Council, is that you don't have to choose between them as a shopper. You can go to both at the same time and at the same place: downtown...
DIXIE - The illustration is typical for its day: a primitive rendition of the rolling landscape just south of Dixie during the second half of the 19th century, presumably after the end of the Civil War in 1865. The scene shows an estate with wheat fields, fruit trees, vegetable plots, fences, young trees, horse drawn wagons, a large barn and a proud farm house with a steam train and cattle on the hills in the background. Underneath the detailed undated drawing, it reads "Farm Residence Of...
