OUTDOORS B1
LOCAL A2
SPORTS A5
Finding the way back
to Pole Creek Ridge
Baker City mayor to
resign late this year
Ducks, Beavers
open football season
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IN THIS EDITION: LOCAL • OUTDOORS & REC • SPORTS
QUICK HITS
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Good Day Wish
To A Subscriber
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 3, 2022 • $1.50
EAGLE CAP WILDERNESS
A special good day to Herald
subscriber Eric Lamb of Baker
City.
BRIEFING
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Expect lane closures,
reduced speeds on I-84
Work has begun to repave
a 13-mile section of Interstate
84 between Ladd Canyon and
North Powder, and drivers
should expect lane closures
and reduced speeds to 55 mph
during daylight hours. Later
in September the contractor
will work at night to reduce
traffi c effects. The project is
scheduled to be done by Nov. 1.
Workers are paving rutted and
cracked pavement between
Mileposts 272 and 285, includ-
ing bridges at exits 278 and
283. That section of freeway
was last paved in 2003, accord-
ing to the Oregon Department
of Transportation.
Baker County Garden
Club to meet Sept. 7
The Baker County Garden
Club will meet Wednesday,
Sept. 7 at 10:30 a.m. at Oregon
Trail Nursery, 600 Elm St.
Please bring a sack lunch and a
chair. The Garden Club will also
have a garage sale on Saturday,
Sept. 10 from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m.
at 995 J St. in Baker City.
Daughters of the
American Revolution to
meet in Baker City
The Daughters of the Ameri-
can Revolution will meet Friday,
Sept. 9 at noon at the Baker
Truck Corral. Those planning
to order lunch (no host) should
arrive at 11 a.m.
WEATHER
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Today
88/43
Chance of storms
Sunday
90/48
Clear
Monday
89/47
Clear
The space below is for a postage label
for issues that are mailed.
Firefighters corral
parts of blazes
U.S. Forest Service photo
The Nebo fire burns in the Eagle Cap Wilderness on Aug. 29, 2022.
BY JAYSON JACOBY
jjacoby@bakercityherald.com
Wallowa-Whitman National For-
est officials called in firefighters on
Thursday, Sept. 1 to slow the spread
of one fire that has been burning in
the Eagle Cap Wilderness for the past
10 days, and they might take similar
steps to curb a second blaze on the
opposite side of the wilderness.
Both the Sturgill fire, near the
North Minam River on the west side
of the wilderness, and the Nebo fire,
on the east side, have grown rap-
idly during a week marked by re-
cord-breaking heat.
Each fire produced a large smoke
plume on Wednesday, and both
spawned a pyrocumulus cloud — a
thunderhead generated in part by
the fire’s heat.
Todd Pederson, assistant fire
management officer for the Wal-
lowa-Whitman, said both of the
fires, which were started by light-
ning from storms Aug. 22 and 23,
are likely to surpass the 2019 Granite
Gulch fire as the biggest blaze in the
wilderness since the Wallowa-Whit-
man adopted a policy about 30 years
ago allowing officials to manage
lightning fires in the Eagle Cap, a
strategy that can include monitoring
blazes rather than actively fighting
them.
The Granite Gulch fire burned
about 5,500 acres.
On Thursday afternoon the Stur-
gill fire was estimated at 4,815 acres,
the Nebo fire at 3,086 acres.
With more hot, dry and windy
weather forecast on Friday, Sept. 2,
Pederson said it’s likely both fires
will continue to spread. He expected
burning conditions Friday to be sim-
ilar to Wednesday.
The fires’ growth has already
prompted Pederson to summon fire-
fighters and helicopters to corral
their spread in certain directions.
On Thursday he dispatched a crew
of smokejumpers, along with a heli-
copter to drop water, to prevent the
Sturgill fire from spreading east into
the upper Bear Creek drainage.
“We’re taking full suppression” on
that area, Pederson said on Thursday
afternoon.
He said he doesn’t want the fire
to burn into another large drainage
such as Bear Creek or Threemile
Creek, where it could grow rapidly.
A helicopter also doused a spot
fire that started on the west side of
the Minam River on Wednesday,
Aug. 31, Pederson said.
He said the goal is to keep the
Sturgill fire on the east side of the
Minam and within the North Mi-
nam River area, where on Thursday
it was also spreading south toward
Green Lake, reaching an area burned
in the Hazel Mountain fire, which
officials also monitored, more than a
decade ago. Pederson said he hopes
the Sturgill fire will burn some of the
downed trees left by the earlier blaze.
This mixture of tactics — moni-
toring the fire generally but fighting
the flames in certain areas — is part
of the Wallowa-Whitman’s policy for
lightning-sparked blazes in the Ea-
gle Cap.
Back to school — and normal
Classes start Sept. 6 in
Baker schools
BY JAYSON JACOBY
jjacoby@bakercityherald.com
For the first time in three years, stu-
dents in the Baker School District will
have a normal start to the school year.
Tuesday, Sept. 6 is the first day of
classes.
This is also the first school year for
the district’s new superintendent, Erin
Lair, a 2004 Baker High School gradu-
ate and former math and language arts
teacher at Baker Middle School.
Lair was hired in early March and
started work earlier this summer.
“Going in to this new school year, I feel
a real sense of shared hope and enthusi-
asm for where we are headed as a district,”
BY CLAYTON FRANKE
cfranke@bakercityherald.com
West Nile virus is stick-
ing around in Baker County
mosquitoes, but there’s no
evidence the bugs have
spread the disease to people.
Three batches of mos-
quitoes trapped recently
TODAY
Issue 49
12 pages
Samantha O’Conner/Baker City Herald, File
Lair wrote in an email to the Herald.
Students will be headed for their
classrooms, the normal destination but
Baker County every year for
the past decade except 2020
and 2018, according to the
Oregon Health Authority.
But what isn’t typical is
excessive heat that has dom-
inated much of August and
is forecast to continue at least
through Labor Day.
Mosquitoes progress
through their growth cycles
faster when temperatures
warm the water where the
eggs hatch, Hutchinson said.
See Heat / A3
See Barn / A3
one that during the pandemic suddenly
wasn’t assured.
vector control district, which
is responsible for controlling
mosquitoes in a 200,000-
acre area that includes most
of Baker, Keating and Bowen
valleys.
Test results take about a
week.
Detecting the virus in
mosquitoes throughout the
summer and into early Sep-
tember is typical for Baker
County, Hutchinson said.
West Nile virus has been
detected in mosquitoes in
Crossword ...............B2 & B4
Dear Abby .........................B6
Horoscope ..............B2 & B4
BY LISA BRITTON
lbritton@bakercityherald.com
HALFWAY — Lynda Bird
clipped the ribbon to offi-
cially dedicate the new horse
barn at the Pine Valley Fair-
grounds on Thursday, Sept.
1 — just one day before the
101st annual Baker County
Fair.
“We want to thank every-
body for coming, and for all
your donations,” Bird said to
those gathered in the mid-day
sunshine.
This was a project of the
Friends of the Pine Valley
Fairgrounds.
“We’ve talked about this for
years,” Bird said.
The new barn is 12 feet
wide and 120 feet long. It is
divided into 10 horse stalls,
each 12 feet by 12 feet.
According to Bird’s re-
search, horse racing in Half-
way dates to the early 1900s.
Students and parents gathered Aug. 30, 2021, for the first day of classes at Brooklyn Pri-
mary School in Baker City.
in Keating Valley, about 15
miles east of Baker City,
tested positive for the virus.
That brings the summer’s
total of infected mosquito
“pools” to 18, said Matt
Hutchinson, manager of the
Baker Valley Vector Control
District.
The mosquitoes, which
were tested at a lab at Ore-
gon State University, were
caught Aug. 24 in two traps
maintained by the U.S. For-
est Service, and one by the
Classified ....................B2-B4
Comics ..............................B5
Community News.............A2
Racing
to finish
a barn
A new horse barn
in Halfway is ready
for the 101st
Baker County Fair
See School / A3
Heat could keep mosquito numbers up
Aerial spraying
Aug. 29 in Keating
Valley effective,
manager says
See Blazes / A3
Jayson Jacoby ..................A4
Lottery Results .................A2
News of Record ................A2
Opinion .............................A4
Outdoors .................B1 & B6
Senior Menus ...................A2
Sports ...............................A5
Turning Backs ..................A2
Weather ............................B6