P REVIEW OF THIS WEEKEND ’ S O REGON M OUNTAIN C RUISE page A10 www.wallowa.com Enterprise, Oregon 3 Senior Living residents get 30-day notices June 10, 2015 Historic lodge goes up for sale Crawford no longer a full-timer ” By Kathleen Ellyn Wallowa County Chieftain The late Steve Larson, last man- ager and co-owner of Wallowa Lake Lodge, was a preservationist, taking pride in restoring and maintaining the historical ambiance of the 1923 lodge. By Steve Tool The new owner ... we shall see. Wallowa County Chieftain Historic Wallowa Lake Lodge is for sale and the deadline for getting Three local families with your sealed bid in on the 8.46-acre, members residing at Wallowa lake front property is July 29. The Valley Senior Living report- minimum bid is $2,750,000 and Bank edly received letters from the of Eastern Oregon has agreed to han- facility stating that the resi- GOHWKH¿QDQFLQJIRUTXDOL¿HGEX\HUV Courtesy photo dents’ needs now exceeded Larson and his business partner the care level offered there. Marc Zwerling have owned the prop- Wallowa Lake Lodge in summer. The letter also indicated the erty since 1990. UHVLGHQWV KDG GD\V WR ¿QG Larson, an avid hiker, had been Laura Cosgrove. way performance.” other options. talking about retiring and spending “It’s a lot of responsibility, a daunt- When Larson died last July, Zwer- A spokesperson for the his time on the trails for the last three ing responsibility, to run this place,” ling took action on those delayed retire- affected families said that all years, said current lodge manager she said. “It’s like putting on a Broad- ment plans. plan to appeal the notices. The three affected indi- viduals were residents of the nursing home the local health care district operated before Th is Breadwinner ‘29er’ will be hidden somewhere in the Wallowas Wallowa Valley Senior Living (WVSL), an assisted living facility, was built. See NOTICES, Page A9 $1 IT’S A LOT OF RESPONSI- BILITY, A DAUNTING RESPONSIBILITY, TO RUN THIS PLACE. IT’S LIKE PUTTING ON A BROADWAY PERFORMANCE. Laura Cosgrove, lodge manager NW Realty Marketing of Portland is handling the sale. NW Realty Mar- keting is the same well-known auction company that handled the sale of the Minam River Lodge and, more recent- ly, the former Sterling Bank building in Enterprise. NW Realty Marketing puts out sales catalogs on hundreds of rural and com- mercial properties and sells via auction. See LODGE, Page A9 the week of July 13 This map shows the location of the 7 Wonders. The custom Wallowa County bike built by Breadwinner Cycles of Portland. Travel Oregon map Courtesy photo Aaron Marineau By Steve Tool Wallowa County Chieftain Retiring Enterprise High School teacher Mike Craw- ford can look back at a distin- guished teaching and coaching career after 27 years of instructing students LQ WKH ¿Q er points of mathematics and athletics. Raised Crawford in Halfway, Crawford’s father moved to Jo- seph just as Crawford was start- ing his college career at Oregon State University. Crawford re- WXUQHGWR-RVHSKGXULQJKLV¿UVW summer off, and eventually met and married his wife, Tammy, who is from Joseph. Crawford graduated from OSU in 1981 after a detour into education from computer science. Crawford said a phone call during his junior year of college from the father of his best man, who was an adminis- trator at Arlington High School, changed his course of action. See CRAWFORD, Page A8 C HIEFTAIN WA L L O WA C O U N T Y Wallowa County’s Newspaper Since 1884 Volume 133 Issue No. 8 © 2015 EO Media Group SCAVENGER HUNT ‘7 BIKES 7 WONDERS’ TO HIDE BIKE IN WALLOWAS By Kathleen Ellyn G Wallowa County Chieftain et ready to get your hands on a one-of-a-kind cus- tom-made Wallowas moun- tain bike. Travel Oregon has announced a new tourism booster event designed to ex- cite the bicycle riders of the state. They’re calling it the “7 Bikes 7 Wonders” scavenger hunt to complement the record-setting “Seven Wonders of Oregon” campaign. Travel Oregon began the popular Seven Won- ders campaign in 2014 and named Mt. Hood, the Columbia River Gorge, Smith Rock, the Coast, Crater Lake, the Painted Hills and the Wallowas as the 7 Wonders of Oregon. That campaign was so successful that Travel Oregon’s fan base grew by more than 120,000 in just one year. Now, Travel Oregon has announced that seven Oregon bike-makers have made seven custom bikes for each of the Wonder areas and those bikes will be hidden near each of the Wonders — ready to be claimed by some lucky bicyclist. A scavenger hunt, which begins June 15 with the Mt. Hood bike, will reveal clues to each bike’s exact whereabouts, focusing on a different bike hidden at a different Wonder each week. The ¿UVWFOXHZLOOEHVKDUHGRQOLQHRQ0RQGD\VWKH VHFRQGRQOLQHPLGZHHNDQGWKH¿QDOFOXHZLOOEH available only if you travel to the area. Clues will be posted at TravelOregon.com/7Bikes7Wonders and on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter using the hashtag #7bikes7wonders. The Wallowas will hide a “29er” bike designed for wide-open spaces built by Ira Ryan and Tony Pereira of Breadwinner Cycles, Portland. The bike will be featured the week of July 13. “We designed this bike to be a long-distance, go-anywhere sort of explorer machine, because the Wallowas region offers a huge landscape,” Ryan said. “The only limitation to a bike like this is where you can pedal. So this is like the old horse of the bike world — it gets you up the steep pitches, down the trail. It’s a rugged, faithful companion.” The Wallowas bike has the frame, clearance and structure to go anywhere, Ryan said. “It re- ÀHFWVKRZPRVWSHRSOHULGHLQWKH:DOORZDV² big stretches of valleys and then rugged terrain surrounding.” See HUNT, Page A8 Enterprise saves $850K on water project Money will be used for hydrants, other ‘alternative additives’ By Kathleen Ellyn Wallowa County Chieftain The City of Enterprise just saved $858,000 on the construction bill for its wa- ter system improvement project. Enterprise City Council voted Monday night to ac- cept a low bid of $3.4 million for completion of the project from Warrington Construc- tion Corporation of Oregon, a large firm out of Ontario. The city had budgeted $4.1 million for the project. This amount included a contin- gency fund. In all, the city received four bids ranging from $3.24 to $4.97 million, with War- rington Construction being the lowest bid. The $858,000 savings meant that the city could im- mediately include the five “alternative additives”: 57 new fire hydrants, rehabil- itation of the concrete res- ervoir, an epoxy coating for the concrete reservoir and other projects identified as “needed work.” These projects had been placed on the additives list in case the bids received did not allow for their immedi- ate completion. The additions brought Warrington’s contract amount up to $3.9 million, leaving the city a healthy $557,000 in the contingency fund. See WATER, Page A9