SATURDAY, AUGUST 14, 2021
BAKER CITY HERALD — A3
LOCAL
Hanley’s cartoon maps coming to Baker City
picture of Baker City back in
2006 and Tom Novac did one
Nationally recognized car- in 1990. Novac’s had been
toonist, Jon Hanley, is teaming more detailed and they have
with the Baker County Cham- never done a map that people
ber of Commerce this summer could take with them.
“We’ve been working with
to produce a unique, one of a
kind “Historic brochure map.” Jon to create a map that will
be foldable, like a brochure,
Shelly Cutler, executive
director of the Baker County and when folks come to the
Visitor’s Center, we’re able to
Chamber of Commerce, is
give them their fun cartoon
excited.
“We think it’s going to just map of the city,” said Cutler.
The cartoon map will have
be a fun project,” said Cutler.
the exact vision of the build-
Cutler said Hanley did a
By SAMANTHA O’CONNER
Baker City Herald
ing so visitors can see what
it looks like before they get
there.
“We got kind of the idea
this go-around because the
Eagle Valley area, Richland,
Halfway, in that area, they are
doing one as well. And so we
thought, ‘well heck yeah. We’re
going to have one for Richland
and Halfway, let’s do one that
incorporates Baker City and
a little bit of Sumpter and
Haines,’” said Cutler.
It will all be in one map
and will be modified and not
exact to scale.
Hanley will begin working
with businesses this month to
see who is interested in par-
ticipating. Once they confirm
with local businesses that
want to be showcased, Cutler
said they will look at historic
landmarks and other areas of
interest.
They plan to have the car-
toon map ready to go this fall.
The Chamber will carry
them at their location and be
available for local businesses
to carry for their customers.
“I think it’s going to be
something fun, something dif-
ferent, something unique that
the visitors will just really be
able to enjoy and hold onto as
a keepsake,” said Cutler.
“Our maps are funded
by the business community
as advertising and bragging
rights! Once the downtown
is presented I will work with
Shelly (Cutler) at the Cham-
ber on incorporating as much
COUNCIL
Continued from Page A1
Lisa Britton/Baker City Herald
Pondosa proclaimed itself as the geographic center of the U.S. after Hawaii and Alaska were added as
states in 1959.
PONDOSA
Continued from Page A1
Lester Gaddy, brother to Bob’s
wife Jean, saw an advertisement in
the Eugene Register-Guard.
“The whole town. For sale,” Lori
said.
Lester, she said, “traded three city
blocks for the whole town.”
Lester died in 1982, and left his
property to his only sister, Jean.
Jean and Bob Bennett faced a
decision: sell the Pondosa property, or
sell their Eugene home and move to
Eastern Oregon.
“I had a debate on it,” Bob remem-
bers.
He’d lived in Eugene all of his
life, and had recently retired from
Georgia-Pacific, a timber company.
But he was tired of the rain west
of the Cascades.
So the couple sold their place and
moved to Pondosa in 1983.
“All this nice sunshine and fresh
air,” Bob said. “It was a good idea. I
kept busy over here.”
Although the houses had been
sold and moved to other towns
nearby, Bob discovered a huge pile of
sawdust left at the mill site.
He can point it out, too, on the
aerial photo of Pondosa that hangs
on the wall of the store.
He set to grinding up that saw-
dust and started selling it as garden
mulch.
“I’d deliver it in five-yard loads all
over,” he said.
That kept him busy for a while,
until the pile finally disappeared.
CENSUS
Continued from Page A1
To see that population is
increasing is interesting be-
cause Rynerson was quick to
note that as a whole, Oregon
reported more deaths than
births in the last 10 years.
“That was true in the ma-
jority of counties. There were
more deaths than births due
to aging populations and
low birth rates,” Rynerson
said. “That’s only going to ac-
celerate. So in order to save
off loss those counties will
be expected to attract more
people moving in than out.”
A contributing factor in
why births are lower than
deaths is that populations
are seeing birth rates plunge
among different categories
as more women are focused
on building a family at a
later age unlike decades be-
fore.
“It took 20 years,” he said with a
smile.
While he worked at that, Jean ran
the store.
“People yet talk about her. She’d
visit with everybody,” Bob said.
Jean passed away in 2015. Dur-
ing her illness, she and Bob lived in
Nampa with Lori and her husband,
Dennis.
After Jean died, Lori thought her
father might stay in Idaho with her.
But he returned to Pondosa in the
winter of 2015.
The store is warmed by three wood
stoves, so Lori and Dennis came as
often as they could to help haul fire-
wood and move the snowdrifts.
That lasted only a few months be-
fore they decided, in February 2016,
to move to Pondosa.
Prior to her marriage, Lori had
lived in Pondosa for a time, and she
met her husband in Baker City.
“Twenty-five years later, we’re
back,” she said with a smile.
The Pondosa store has 15 bed-
rooms. During the days of the mill
operation, the 12 bedrooms upstairs
were rented to single men — two to a
room. They all shared one bathroom.
In addition to the store, the town
boasted a gas station, meat market,
and post office.
“That old vault is where they
stored the payroll,” Bob said, pointing
to a structure just across the drive-
way from the store.
Although the store was closed for
a bit when Jean was sick, and again
in the depths of the coronavirus
pandemic, it is now open seven days
a week.
“If you look at the teen
and the early twenties
birth rates, those have just
plunged beyond belief. They
are the lowest it’s ever been
in the history of the U.S. and
that’s generally a good thing.
People understand the dif-
ficulty of having a child at a
very young age, and even up
to age 30, there are far fewer
births to women under 30
than there were in the past,”
Rynerson said.
Oftentimes residents who
migrated from other states
to Oregon are those that are
on the search for economic
opportunity and are a part of
the working age population,
but it doesn’t correlate with
the birth rate in counties, let
alone states.
“The warehouse indus-
try, the junction between
I-84 and I-82, and the ports
among Umatilla and Mor-
row counties, that has given
the counties real economic
“Once we got Dad vaccinated, we
opened back up,” Lori said.
Lori, who is a registered nurse,
administered her dad’s second
dose, on Feb. 11 at the Baker
County Health Department in
Baker City.
“We’re here and adding to our
business,” Bob added.
Lori said the store stocks
“mostly refreshments and snacks”
— soda, ice cream, candy and chips.
But Bob can serve up burritos, too,
and he offers some essentials such
as flour, sugar, milk and eggs.
They’ve also applied for a liquor
license.
The store is open daily from
8 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Offerings have expanded outside
as well. This spring they developed
three campsites, and Lori posted
the availability on the website
hipcamp.com.
“We get campers off the free-
way,” Lori said. “North Carolina is
the farthest away.”
Between the store and camp-
sites is a deck surrounded by trees
and flowers in an area dedicated to
Jean’s memory.
“We fixed up Mom’s little park,”
Lori said.
She said it’s proven popular as
a resting spot for touring car clubs
as well as travelers on motorcycles
and bicycles.
“It’s like a little oasis in the
middle of the desert,” Lori said.
For updates on the store, check
the Facebook page: Pondosa, Or-
egon: the geographic center of the
United States.
advantages that have at-
tracted workers over the last
few decades,” Rynerson said.
“In the long term, Oregon
is going to grow if we keep
attracting people from other
states and countries, but we
aren’t going to continue to
grow from births.”
The Census date was
originally scheduled for
April of 2020, but with
the COVID-19 pandemic
making its mark just one
month earlier, the numbers
were only briefly disrupted,
which mainly only reflected
on college towns, but saw
higher participation as a
whole compared to the 2010
census.
“A lot of students went
home before census day, and
there was a big concern over
data collection that I think
the real economic impact
of the pandemic won’t be
showing up in these 2020
numbers because of when
the census was done, and the
census was very happy with
the completeness of the data
collection. They had more
time to do it, there was a
higher self-response rate in
2020 than in 2010 state-
wide,” Rynerson said.
Though it’s easy to mis-
conceive that the pandemic
can raise the birth rate due
to the lockdown, Rynerson
was quick to point out that
the complete opposite was
true.
“People don’t want to be
having a child when the hos-
pitals are overcrowded, and
they can’t go anywhere or do
anything, so the pandemic
had a bigger effect on birth
rates in the long run than
death rates,” Rynerson said.
The biggest surprise for
Rynerson was in race and
ethnicity.
Since people are able to
mark more than one race
when they are filling out
“The language in here uses
the word ‘may’ and they may
do this follow up assessment,
they may bring in these local
agencies that they notified and
had that discussion. I think,
quite honestly, they’re going to
need to in order to make sure
that we’ve done our due dili-
gence to prove that we made
every effort to meet those two
requirements in 203.077,” said
Cannon.
The other exceptions to the
24-hour notice are if there are
illegal activities other than
camping are occurring and ex-
ceptional emergencies such as
flooding or site contamination.
Cannon said in the Baker
City ordinances, they have one
that goes with the parks.
“It’s not adequate as a
policy to address, to meet this
statute,” said Cannon.
City attorney Dan Van
Thiel attended the meeting
to answer any questions the
council had.
Mayor Kerry McQuisten
asked if there were any law-
suits already filed with HB
3115.
He said there are two
federal cases, one out of Boise
CASES
Continued from Page A1
The Oregon Health Author-
ity reported 670 COVID-19
related hospitalizations in
Oregon Thursday, the highest
number at any time during the
pandemic.
Lamb said this is a call to
action.
“First, absolutely stay
home if you’re sick, don’t pass
illness to others. Second, get
vaccinated. The virus will keep
mutating and spreading until
we eliminate potential carri-
ers,” said Lamb in the press
release.
Lamb said he likes to think
of it like fighting a wildfire.
“Unless we remove the fuel
in front of the fire, it will keep
burning. Widespread vaccina-
tion is the quickest way that
we can stop this virus. Natural
immunity will take another 3-5
years or more for this virus to
burn out — if it doesn’t keep
mutating. Third, wash your
hands often, and fourth, wear
a face covering indoors to avoid
unknowingly spreading the
their census, the percentages
of people who solely marked
white’s percentages actually
dropped, barely increasing
by about 30,000.
“The reason that white
alone fell was because fewer
hispanics, when they got to
the race question, which is
a separate question, fewer
identified as white alone
and many, many more
identified as white and some
other race,” Rynerson said.
“There’s a growing realiza-
tion because it’s become
standard on all kinds of
questionnaires and federal
data collection. Ten years
ago it was kind of new to
people that they can write
in multiple ethnic, ancestry,
racial identities, (but) now
it’s kind of more well known
that is something that you
can do, so people took advan-
tage of it.”
Ultimately, for those who
aren’t too knowledgeable on
of the history, geological land-
marks and historic buildings
as we can fit on the artwork!”
said Hanley in a press release.
Cutler said there is a fee
involved as it is an advertis-
ing map and Hanley will
discuss it with the businesses
interested.
Space is limited to a first
come first serve basis. To learn
more or to reserve your space
on the map, contact Jon Han-
ley at 541-786-5776 or Shelly
Cutler at 541-523-5855.
and one out of Southwestern
Oregon.
Van Thiel said the litiga-
tion concerning this area is the
federal court system, not the
state court system. They have
lawyers looking at it from all
over the state looking at it.
“I want to assure this coun-
cil that, while I’ve attended
innumerable sessions over this
subject, I want this city to move
cautiously,” said Van Thiel.
He said it is a “very danger-
ous area of the law.”
“It’s actually a part of four
bills that were introduced and
3115 is compromised and I
suspect the other three were
also,” said Van Thiel.
Cannon said their best
effort at that point is to create
a policy that says they will put
up a sign that people have 24
hours to move on.
“If they don’t move, we prob-
ably don’t have a lot of teeth to
do anything. If they do move,
then we have together up all
the stuff, put it in storage, so
the site gets cleaned up, wait 30
days, and then we can dispose
of the items. From a practical
standpoint, that is about what
we have on our tool belt right
now,” said Cannon.
McQuisten said they will
continue these discussions in
future meetings.
virus to others,” said Lamb in
the press release.
Lamb recommends everyone
12 and older get vaccinated.
Baker County provides
transportation services for
those needing assistance to ac-
cess vaccination and testing.
Lamb said he has heard
concerns about the vaccine ap-
proval process being sped up.
“President Donald Trump
initiated Operation Warp Speed
to bypass bureaucratic red tape
to get these vaccines in arms as
quickly as possible. What was
not rushed was the clinical tri-
als and studies,” said Lamb in
the press release.
According to the press
release, full FDA approval is
expected in September for the
Pfizer vaccine, with the other
two vaccines closely thereafter.
“Help keep our kids in
school, get our workforce back
to work and our economy mov-
ing forward. Consider getting
vaccinated,” said Lamb in the
press release.
To take advantage of these
services contact the Baker
County Health Department at
541-523-8211.
what the Census is able to
accomplish, it provides gov-
ernment funding to towns
big or small to assist them in
their day-to-day operations,
so all it would cost a resident
is their time.
“It’s really important.
The state of Oregon overall,
some of it goes to the state in
general, but some of it goes
to communities,” Rynerson
said. “The per capita revenue
that cities get is based on
population. Anybody that’s
not counted means fewer
dollars in their communi-
ties.”
Census questionnaires
are often filled out online,
but in different communities
where internet use is sparse,
these questionnaires are
expected to be mailed back
to the returning address.
For more information
on the 2020 Census, go to
https://www.census.gov/
en.html.