Coulee Recollections

Ten Years Ago

Paying to protect Grand Coulee Dam does not come cheap to the Bureau of Reclamation, which pays the Washington State Patrol and area police departments a high price for their services. Grand Coulee and Coulee Dam have negotiated contracts with the Bureau to help provide 24-hour police service to the dam at least through September, with possible extension through 2005.

Anyone in the Grand Coulee Dam area concerned about a new firing range above the town of Coulee Dam will get a chance to talk to Bureau of Reclamation officials tonight.

It’s a scary thing for a cowboy businessman, used to getting paid by the head, to sink his money into something you can’t eat. But Don McClure finally bit the bullet, wrote a book and paid to have it printed. “People kept telling me, ‘You gotta do it,’” says McClure. And at 75, he figured he better, too.

A new garbage cart system was proposed last week to the town councils in Electric City and Elmer City. A 65 gallon cart would be available for rent to people in the area for $1.25 a month or $15 a year, if they chose to use the wheeled containers.

Heather L. Catlow, a sophomore from Coulee Dam, was among the 713 students named to the Gonzaga University President’s List for fall semester. Students must earn a 3.7 or better grade point average to be listed.

Twenty Years Ago

Greg Behrens thinks his Columbia Springs Estates land development southeast of Grand Coulee will be a catalyst to the city’s growth. And he’d like to see the city invest in its own future by extending its main water distribution to at least that far into Lincoln County.

Ice on Banks Lake, which has been softened with the warm temperatures, will soon become even more hazardous.

An early morning rock slide in the rock cut on State Route 155 north of Elmer City temporarily closed the highway Friday. The slide occurred shortly after 7 p.m. A previous slide occurred in the general vicinity about 20 years ago.

Thirty Years Ago

A new full line drive-in opened March 8 in Coulee Dam. Located at the intersection of Highway 155 and Roosevelt near the east end of the bridge the building will house the Spillway Drive Inn.

Ginger Higginbotham, a senior at Lake Roosevelt High School and valedictorian for the class of 1983, has been selected to present a paper she has written at the Washington Junior Sciences and Humanities symposium to be held in Seattle March 18.

Forty Years Ago

Brownie Scouts from Grand Coulee recently visited the Star Office and were given a tour of the newspaper plant. Those in the tour were Kathleen Meyer, Terri Hertenstein, Rena Barnes, Julianne Hunter, Cheryl Jones, Darlene O’Neal, and Troop Leader Carol Winiecki.

Fifty Years Ago

Out at Rex-Delrio, ranchers were preparing to bring truck loads of fertilizer for the new lawns at the hospital.

In Coulee Dam, thieves broke into the Coulee Dam High School causing several hundred dollars worth of damages.

Sixty Years Ago

Harold St. Jeor, justice of the peace for the Elmer City precinct of Okanogan County, has been appointed police judge by Mayor Otis Tillman.

The Electric City fire department answered two alarms this week. One fire was the result of trash burning and the other, started from an undetermined source.