Compiled by Don Hoiness from archived copies of The Bulletin at the Des Chutes Historical Museum.
100 YEARS AGO
For the week ending
Mar. 16, 1913
Advertisement: Are you wise?
If you are Wise, as I surmise you’ll take your clothes to Harry Wyse
For he, your old suit will disguise and fix it up so neat and nice,
Your girl will open wide her eyes in ecstasy and glad surprise;
And think your just the proper size to share her nook in Paradise;
So if you’re wise, as I surmise, you’ll take your clothes to Harry Wyse.
Sather Building
Advertisement: First National Bank, More dairy cows coming
We expect to ship in two or three cars of high grade dairy cows from Wisconsin about April 1.
These cows will be sold on easy terms. Parties wishing same should make application now. Write or call at the bank for particulars.
Dr. U.O. Coe, President, E.A. Sather, Vice President, O.S. Hudson, Cashier
Many homesteads taken in southeast
The rapidity with which public lands to the southeast are being taken up is indicated by the fact that during the last couple of weeks, one local firm of locators, the Oregon Land & Immigration Co., has located 28 homesteaders.
As each took up a 320 acre tract, the total acreage involved is 8,900, while other locations made recently doubtless bring the total up perhaps to 25,000 acres.
75 YEARS AGO
For the week ending
Mar. 16, 1938
Hitler seizes control of Austria
Fuehrer Adolph Hitler, preceded by thousands of German troops, came to Austria today and was hailed by the now dominant Nazis as a liberator.
The Nazification of the country was accomplished and anti-Jewish agitation began. The ousted Chancellor, Kurt Schuschnigg and other officials were in custody, guarded by storm troopers. German mechanized troops were everywhere in the country and one detachment crossed to the Brenner pass, gateway to Italy.
The first tanks entered the suburbs of Vienna in the late afternoon. Fifty German planes arrived at the military airport of Weiner Neustadt, 25 miles from Vienna. A great torchlight parade will be held in Vienna tonight and Hitler will speak by radio from Linz.
Government circles said the fuehrer would come here tomorrow. Most businesses and many banks were suspended today in honor of the German coup and celebrations were held throughout the country.
He’ll put “roaring drunks" in a tiger cage
Crusading William E. Kane, mayor of Woburn, Mass., apparently believes in the corrective value of publicity.
He has announced plans to build a “tiger cage" on wheels in which drunks of both sexes would be drawn through the downtown streets of the city until they sobered up. It will have a steel roof and a pine floor and its steel bars will be covered with rubber.
The whole job is to be painted silver. It is said the mayor will pay the cage’s cost of $400 out of his own pocket.
50 YEARS AGO
For the week ending
Mar. 16, 1963
Drop in gas prices reported
A 5-cent drop in the price of gasoline was quite general around town today, with most prices posted at 29.9 cents per gallon.
The former price was 34.9. The move to slash gas price was “in the making" for some time, but did not break here until Thursday of last week. Over the weekend, most stations fell in line with the lower prices.
Bend’s newest bridge open to travel Friday afternoon
Bend’s newest bridge, a $90,000 structure on the site of the Pioneer Portland Avenue span, was opened to travel Friday afternoon.
An informal ceremony marked the opening and at 5:05, the first “official" crossing of the span was made by an automobile, when a car operated by City Manager Hal Puddy crossed from the east side with Don Denning, acting mayor, as one of his passengers. First “non official" car over the span was driven by Dave MacMillan, a new arrival from California.
Aside from Denning, other city commissioners present for the ceremony were Jack Dempsey, Paul Reynolds and Leon Devereaux, Jr. Interested spectators included Robert L. Coats, contractor, P.B. Johnson, who worked on the original span, constructed in the fall of 1912, more than 50 years ago, hoped to be present for the opening but was kept home by illness.
Just before traffic rolled over the new span, city workers completed installation of a Cyclone fence, at the north side of the road and adjacent to Pioneer Park. Although the new bridge is open to traffic, paving of approaches remain to be completed, and some timbers must be removed.
25 YEARS AGO
For the week ending
Mar. 16, 1988
Life just isn’t the same in Millican
Talking to the scattered few people who live along a flat, barren stretch of U.S. Highway 20 southeast of Bend brings together the story of a man who had become an institution on the High Desert and the drifter who has been charged with killing him.
They’ll tell you about Bill Mellin sitting on the front porch of his Millican Store on sunny days, or playing cribbage with the ranchers and other folks who stopped by, or just watching television in his kitchen with his ancient black Lab, Tramp.
Some of them also will tell you about David Wareham, the parolee from the Oregon State Penitentiary who drifted from job to job among the tiny stores that stand as landmarks along the High Desert between Bend and Burns. Wareham was arrested near Burns about an hour after he allegedly shot his employer, Bill Mellin in the head with a rifle. He also was charged with the attempted murder of the witness who called police to the scene of the killing — a witness people on the desert know as Don, a former employee of Mellin, but whose full name sheriff’s officers refuse to reveal.
Out in the desert, Mellin’s friends and acquaintances gathered Wednesday afternoon outside the building, garage and gas pumps that make up the Millican Store. Some of them were crying and some of them had a few drinks, and they all were talking about the sometimes gruff old man who owned and operated the Millican Store for the 42 years since he left the Navy and his position as a Seabee diver after World War II. Ed Park and Mark Dunaway stayed at the store all afternoon long.
Park, a photographer and writer who is Mellin’s closest neighbor, lived four miles from the Millican Store. He often came to talk to Mellin about the history of the Milllican area.
Dunaway is the caretaker at the Pine Mountain Observatory, nine miles from the store. He’d come down to the store during the daytime when the astronomers were asleep and the observatory got lonely. He and Mellin would play cribbage, “and shoot the breeze and talk about old times."
“We had a similar philosophy on the country," Park said. “We liked the desert. We appreciated it, and very few people do appreciate it."
