Enterprise, Oregon
135th Year, No. 12
Wednesday, July 3, 2019
Wallowa.com
$1
Shake the Lake
on shaky ground
Fireworks show needs funds
to continue next year
By Ellen Morris Bishop
Wallowa County Chieftain
The traditional Shake the Lake fi reworks
show is primed to explode into the skies
over Wallowa Lake at its customary time –
dusk, or about 9 p.m.—on Thursday, July 4.
Spectators in the county park and along
the lake shore will be treated to almost two
hours of multi-intensity and multi-color
pyrotechnics, including crossetes (large stars
that then break into smaller stars), chrysan-
themums (a spherical burst that leaves a visi-
ble burst of sparks) and bouquet shells, which
scatter a number of smaller shells across the
sky before they explode. The colors of the
fi reworks come from a variety of metallic
compounds that include copper (blue), cal-
cium (orange), barium (green) lithium and
strontium (red) and antimony and titanium
(bright silver colors.)
If you don’t want to watch the fi reworks,
but would rather just listen, you can hear
them more than 10 miles north of Enterprise
along USFS Road 46 (the Charolais Road)
and many other locations in the county.
But unless donors step up to the plate
soon, next year there may be no 4th of July
Shake the Lake fi reworks, said Wallowa
County Chamber of Commerce director
Vicki Searles. “To sustain the program, we
need to pull together,” she said. “The cost of
this year’s fi reworks is $14,500. Right now,
we are about $6,400 short of that amount.”
‘TO SUSTAIN THE PROGRAM,
WE NEED TO PULL TOGETHER.
THE COST OF THIS YEAR’S
FIREWORKS IS $14,500. RIGHT
NOW, WE ARE ABOUT $6,400
SHORT OF THAT AMOUNT.’
Vicki Searles, Wallowa County
Chamber of Commerce director
“The Chamber can pay for this year’s
show by tapping into its limited contin-
gency fund,” Searles said. “But the problem
is assuring that we can do this next year, and
the year after, and continue the celebration
into the future.”
The cost of the Shake the Lake 4th of
July fi reworks has increased an average of
about $1000 each year, according to Cham-
ber fi gures. In 2003, when the Indepen-
dence Day show began, the fi reworks bill
was just $4000. Last year the show cost
about $13,000. “Part of the expenses are the
restrooms and cleanup,” Searles said. “But
Photos by Ellen Morris Bishop
The Crossland Cattle team works on getting their steer heeled in the pasture roping competition.
RANCH RODEO
ROPES IN A CROWD
By Ellen Morris Bishop
Wallowa County Chieftain
his is rodeo without fanfare that brings
ranch families together and offers
friendly competition between ranch
teams. This year, 13 ranches were represented,
including Yost Quarter Horses, Intermountain
Livestock, Smiling M Ranch, J Arrow Live-
stock, Morgan family cattle, Sliding M Ranch,
Quail Run Ranch, and Callin’ the Schotts.
Team-based competitions included Team
Sorting, Team Doctoring, Team Branding, and
Pasture Roping. And there was also bronc rid-
ing, ladies steer-stopping, and the always popu-
lar stick horse races for kids, with two classes:
ages 2-4 and ages 5-7. There’s not much compe-
tition in these two events. Just loping your stick
horse across the fi nish line is a win for most of
the young participants
This year’s rodeo featured modifi ed rules that
enlivened the event, and also made things run
more smoothly. For example, the Team Brand-
ing event allowed each team of three buckaroos
T
See Rodeo, Page A7
RANCH RODEO RESULTS A7
A roper catches his steer in the Team doctoring competition
See Fireworks, Page A9
McKee begins exterior upgrades to Litch Building
By Ellen Morris Bishop
Wallowa County Chieftain
Andy McKee is set to begin
with the exterior upgrades on
the Litch Building. On Monday,
July 1st, McKee’s project part-
ner, Dave Morse, began work
removing old metal siding,
jackhammering stone and con-
crete siding off the River Street
side of building, and uncov-
ering long-forgotten features.
Those included small windows
along the bottom of the build-
ing front that probably served
to provide extra ventilation and
a little bit of extra light and
style. Although the thick wavy
glass in the windows includes
a chicken-wire-like reinforce-
ment, Morse is taking special
care to keep them intact. The
building’s siding is made of
thick, heavy galvanized sheet-
ing, and most of the paint is
fl aking off. Beneath the metal,
there are wide boards that pro-
vided much of the original sid-
ing. “You can see right through
the gaps in the boards into the
building and the apartments
upstairs,” Morse said. “There
was no insulation in the build-
ing what-so-ever.”
The $200,000 Main Street
grant from Oregon’s State His-
toric Preservation Grant only
funds restoration of the Litch
Building’s exterior, Morse
noted. There’s no specifi c
timeline to complete the exte-
rior project, though Morse and
McKee want to fi nish it this
summer. Design to upgrade
the structure of the interior is
not yet complete, and neither
McKee nor Morse could pro-
vide a specifi c timeline for the
second, interior phase of their
project. Upstairs apartments,
with most planned as homes
for professionals, with two as
Air B’n’B rentals, need to be
designed carefully with build-
ing structure in mind, McKee
said. “Some of the new apart-
ments might be a little non-tra-
ditional in their shapes. This
one,” he said pointing to a space
bounded simply by air and
empty joists, “has to be long
and narrow because the walls
here are bearing walls. We can’t
See Litch, Page A9
Ellen Morris Bishop
Andy McKee is set to begin structural work to
stabilize the Litch Building and begin serious
rennovations.