Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley
Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley
Sorted by date Results 827 - 851 of 997
DAYTON - Dayton Days will not "go dark" this year, thanks in part to the Columbia County Fair Board, but it will not likely offer any horse racing. The Washington State Horseracing Commission decided earlier this month to give only six days of racing to the four-track Class C "Bush" circuit, with all of those days going to Sun Downs in Kennewick. This news hit the Touchet Valley hard, with its tradition of horse racing every spring at Dayton Days and Days of Real Sport in Waitsburg. Last week Waitsburg's Days of Real Sport board decided not to...
WAI T SBURG - Trenton Kitselman started wrestling when he was 12. He was still living in Forks at the time. Then his family moved to Waitsburg about three years ago and he joined the Matbirds. For several years, he immersed himself in the sport, attending practices three days a week and going to winter tournaments. It quickly turned into his favorite pass time. But after the 2010 season, his competition in the sport came to an abrupt end. The problem? He is too old . Matbirds, which gratefully...
WAI T SBURG - The first giveaway was a pellet. Nathaniel Farnam found it one day in late January when he came in to work on the Loundagin building next to the post office as he has for more than a year, helping turn it into a boutique hotel. It was an unusual excre- tion. Most pellets of its kind are ovoids, about the size and shape of a chocolate Easter egg or formed like a little Almond Rocca log. This one was spherical, not the shape of what he thought it belonged to. But when Farnam took it...
WAITSBURG - Following the announcement that there will be no pari-mutuel horseracing this year in Waitsburg, Dayton and Walla Walla, the board of the Days of Real Sport has cancelled its annual May racing event for 2011. But DRS directors said they hope it will only be a temporary interruption of a near century-old Waitsburg tradition as they and the other Class C tracks try to change the way their racing events are funded, paving the way for a resumption of the sport in 2012. The Dayton Days...
WAITSBURG - Local developers David Corbett and Mark Jones will ask the city of Waitsburg for a reprieve during Wednesday night's city council meeting. Three years ago, city councilors approved a subdivision plan, Waitsburg Estates, proposed by Corbett and Jones for several acres on Wood Street, just north of the old Jackpot gas station (now Midway Food Mart) on Highway 12. But the agreement with the city stipulated that the small-time developers, both farmers in the Walla Walla area, had to carry a surety bond on the property, which assured...
WAITSBURG - Or should the dateline be "PALM SPRINGS?" Let's go there for a minute in the very recent memory of Waitsburg's very own filmmaker Karen Stanton Gregutt. January. Eighty degrees and lush. Check. Boulevards lined with palm trees, packed with Beamers and Bentleys. Check. Hollywood honchos arriving at screening theaters a la Oscar Night. Check. Beautiful women and handsome guys. Check. Tans. Check. Valets running like mad. Check. A poolside party for French filmmakers at the former home...
DAYTON - Lee Ann Literal has been a racehorse owner and trainer for almost a quarter of a century. The stables on her 500- acre ranch on Smith Hollow Road are a living testament to that long "track" record. She owns 29 horses, including five that are currently racing and 20 that have retired from the sport over the years. Literal doesn't make her living racing horses, but the purse money she gets from the five racers does help pay for the care of the retirees. For that reason alone, she wants horse racing in the area to continue. "I love the...
Editor's Note: The last names of students from Jubilee Youth Ranch were omitted at the request of Jubilee staff in order to comply with the school's policy of confidentiality. P RESCOTT - This is the story of a group of troubled young men and their often unrecognized contribution to the success of Waitsburg-Prescott sports. To be fair, it' s taken years for WP coaches and play- ers, together with staff at the private school where these youths live, to learn how to work with the boys of Jubilee...
Dayton School District's one-year, $250,000 maintenance and operations levy passed Tuesday night. Fifty-five percent of voters approved the levy by 8 p.m. Tuesday. Voter turnout was 54 percent. Collection of the levy, which will cost property taxpayers 45 cents per $1,000 of assessed value, will take place April and October 2012....
A group of about a dozen businesses based in Waitsburg and Dayton are creating a new organization to help promote tourism in the Touchet Valley. Named the Touchet Valley Tourism Alliance, the diverse group that includes the Dayton Chamber of Commerce, Ski Bluewood and a number of hospitality and retail businesses in both communities, plans to launch a number of initiatives to strengthen the area as a travel destination in the coming years. Waitsburg's Commercial Club has been invited to participate as well. "This is the first time a...
When longtime Waitsburg resident Bert Aylward and his wife Linda were getting ready for his family reunion at Fort Walla Walla last summer, they rummaged through a trunk full of old photographs. The couple had stored the keepsakes after his parents passed away but had not gone through all the old pictures yet. Every one of the 88 Witt descendants coming from across the country to Walla Walla was supposed to present or recite an item of family history. As Aylward went through the photos, it...
DAYTON - Some major parts of Dayton's wastewater treatment system have been around since 1938, but Public Works Director Jim Costello believes they'd still work fine "if the state hadn't changed the rules on us," he said. More than 40 concerned citizens attended a special meeting last Monday night to hear from the horse's mouth why Dayton is faced with costly changes to its wastewater treatment plant by 2018. "The short answer is, the city's wastewater treatment plant is discharging too many nutrients and other pollutants into the (Touchet)...
WAITSBURG - The Walla Walla County Sheriff's Office is requesting local residents' assistance in locating Adam Hermanns, whom they call "a potential witness" to last Tuesday night's fire at his parents' residence on West 2nd Street in Waitsburg. "We are attempting to locate Adam as a potential witness related to the fire," Undersheriff Eddie Freyer said in an interview Wednesday. Freyer, who came to the scene of the fire after midnight last Tuesday and again on Wednesday morning, said his office...
WAITSBURG - A historic barn on Bolles Road in Waitsburg burnt down mid day Saturday in the town's second major fire in less than a week. The barn owned by Patty Mantz and, at about 160 years old, believed to be one of the oldest in the state, caught fire shortly before noon. Two goats were rescued from the structure by Brian Seagraves, who operates a cabinet shop in the property. The fate of two other goats, both pregnant, belonging to Diane Dill and her son Alex was unknown at the time of this report. The cause of the fire is unknown as well,...
WAITSBURG - The Walla Walla County Sheriff's Office is requesting local residents' assistance in locating Adams Hermanns, whom they call "a potential witness" to Tuesday night's fire at his parents' residence on W. 2nd Street in Waitsburg. "We are attempting to locate Adam as a potential witness related to the fire," Undersheriff Eddie Freyer said in an interview Wednesday. Freyer, who came to the scene of the fire after midnight Tuesday and again on Wednesday morning, said his office is taking the incident very seriously, investigating it as...
DAYTON - Hi s friends call him " Honker." He's nearly 2 years old. And he was born a Canada goose. But he thinks he's a cow. And as Dayton contractor Jim Erskine knows, Honker makes friends with humans easily and likes to pal around. Earlier this month, Erskine was driving back to Dayton from a job in connection with his local business, JDL Construction, on South Touchet Road. About one mile before the thoroughfare meets up with North Touchet Road, Erskine caught movement in his peripheral...
DAYTON - Starbuck Mayor Darcy Linklater has been charged with driving under the influence and will appear in Columbia County District Court to enter his plea on Wednesday, Feb. 2. Columbia County Sheriff's records indicate Linklater was stopped at 11:20 p.m. Sunday night on McKay-Alto Road headed to Waitsburg after a possible DUI tip was called in to dispatch. Linklater refused to take the breath test for blood alcohol content, according to county prosecutor Rea Culwell. He was arrested, issued a criminal citation charging him with the DUI, and...
WAITSBURG - It all started just before Christmas. The first topic of Andie Holmberg's conversation with B. A. Keve was the food baskets program run by the Waitsburg Ministerial Association. Holmberg's employer, AmericanWest Bank, was about to participate as a donor in the program for disadvantaged local families for the first time. But small town chats meander, and so did this one. Soon, the women's discussion turned to the subject of the Waitsburg Food Bank. Holmberg learned from Keve that the...
WAITSBURG - Volleyball coaches Jessie and Katie Buehler said they felt exonerated Tuesday night after the Waitsburg School District took the formal step of "vacating" their suspensions at a special meeting of its board. "The Board has determined that, in the best interest of all parties concerned, the coaches and, particularly, the student athletes and their families, the suspension be vacated," according to a statement prepared by the district. "The Waitsburg School Board believes that this result puts this matter to rest." The board members a...
WAI T SBURG - The conversation didn't last long. Ross Hamann recalls how he was helping a Cycle Oregon official in the food line under one of the giant tents set up near the Cardinals football field when some 2,500 cyclists and support staff passed through town late last summer. The president of the WP booster club was passing out plates and silverware when the Cycle Oregon official pointed to the sports storage shack right outside the tent and asked what it was. It's worth describing the shack...
WAITSBURG - What's a patriot? One of the answers you might expect to get from a member of the American Legion Auxiliary is "service in the U.S. Military." But that was not the first thought that came to mind when Meara Baker wrote her piece for the organization's "Americanism Essay Contest" last spring. When faced with the question, "What Is My Patriotic Role As A U.S. Citizen?," the first obligation that popped into the head of the Waitsburg middle schooler was the duty to vote and participate...
WALLA WALLA - If there were ever a "bird whisperer" in the Touchet Valley, Huntsville's Joanna Lanning would be it. For 16 years, Lanning has devoted her weekdays to the Pioneer Park Aviary in Walla Walla, where she manages the daily affairs of 200 feathered friends and dotes over them like a mother over her toddlers. Her office at the compound has depictions of birds on every imaginable item: posters, tiles, pillows, place mats, carvings, trays, clocks, T-shirts, paintings and drawings. The...
