LOCAL & STATE
BAKER CITY HERALD • SATuRDAY, SEpTEmBER 3, 2022 A3
School
Blazes
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School buildings were
closed and classes went on-
line in March 2020 at the on-
set of the pandemic.
Students continued to
attend classes remotely
through the rest of that
school year, and they started
the next, in September 2020,
the same way.
The return to in-person
classes was a slow process,
particularly for older stu-
dents.
Elementary students,
in grades K-6, returned to
in-person classes for a full
four-day weekly schedule on
Oct. 14, 2020.
Middle school and high
school students began at-
tending classes one day per
week on Nov. 9, 2020, mov-
ing to two days per week on
Jan. 25, 2021, and to a full
four-day schedule on April
12, 2021.
The 2021 school year was
typical in one sense, as stu-
dents in all grades started
with in-person classes.
But students were required
to wear face masks until state
officials ended that mandate
in early March 2022.
The spring term, then,
marked a return to normal
for the school district, and
that situation will continue
when classes resume after
Labor Day, said Lindsey Mc-
Dowell, the district’s public
information and communi-
cations coordinator.
“With regard to COVID-19
health and safety protocols,
we are beginning the year
much as we ended the last
one,” McDowell wrote in an
email to the Herald. “We will
continue enhanced cleaning
and sanitation and provide
masks and COVID-19 tests
to those who want or need
them, though they are no lon-
ger mandatory.”
Although the pandemic is
no longer affecting school op-
erations, McDowell said the
district continues to follow
guidelines from the Oregon
Health Authority and Oregon
Department of Education, in-
cluding asking students and
staff who are ill to stay home.
Those who test positive
for COVID-19 should stay
home for at least 5 days from
the onset of symptoms or the
date of a positive test.
McDowell said teachers re-
turned to schools on Aug. 29
for their in-service week. Un-
like last year, teachers were
also able to gather on Aug. 30
for an in-person meeting.
Baker High School sports
are also underway, with foot-
ball, cross-country, volleyball
and soccer teams in action.
Lair, who replaced Mark
Witty, who is retired but also
overseeing the district’s Or-
egon International School,
said she is eager for classes to
begin.
“As staff, we are intention-
ally pushing ourselves out
of silos and familiar spaces
to be collaborators and crit-
ical friends,” she said. “We
are all here for our students,
and one thing I am really ex-
cited for in the coming year
is working with a student
advisory committee at the
secondary level and spend-
ing time with our youngest
learners, as well. We are here
to give our students the tools
to thrive in society and in-
novate our future world into
existence. I am so excited for
this new school year to get
underway!”
At 365,000 acres, it is the
biggest federal wilderness in
Oregon, with enough room
to allow fires to burn with-
out threatening private prop-
erty or areas outside the wil-
derness.
One of the purposes of the
1964 Wilderness Act is to
allow natural processes, in-
cluding fire, to happen with-
out human intervention.
However, when a fire ei-
ther poses a threat to private
property — there are a few
such parcels within the wil-
derness — or burns close to
the wilderness boundary,
Pederson said fire officials
consider options such as lim-
ited firefighting.
That’s why these blazes
are called “managed” fires,
he said.
The boundary issue is af-
fecting the Wallowa-Whit-
man’s approach to dealing
with the Nebo fire, which is
about 20 miles southeast of
the Sturgill fire, in the Lick
Creek area north of the Im-
naha River.
The Nebo fire moved
north on Wednesday, Ped-
erson said, to within about a
quarter mile of the Tender-
foot trailhead, which is at
the end of the 100 Road and
near the border of the wil-
derness.
He said fire crews are us-
ing machinery to grind trees
and brush along the road to
reduce the amount of fuel.
They also planned to light
backfires to create a wider
fuelbreak between the 100
Road and the north edge of
the fire.
Barn
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The Baker County Fair
started in 1921, and the orig-
inal race horse barns were
built in 1935.
“They’d race during the ro-
deo,” Bird said.
A 1936 program lists Buck,
owned by Chas. Whiteley and
ridden by C. Summers, and
Blue, owned by Vera Jones and
ridden by D. Summers.
Horse owners and rac-
ers in 1946 included Ben-
ita Smelcher, Jane Smelcher,
Ralph Cook, Don Rock, Ve
Makinson, Percy Laird, Ray
Harding, Wayne Curtis, Doc
Summers and Dorothy Sum-
mers.
In the 1950s, local racers
were joined by Native Amer-
icans from Warm Springs. By
that time, all 20 stalls in the
horse barn were filled, with
overflow into the cow barns.
In 2007, the horse races
were replaced by mule races,
which are still held during the
Panhandle Rodeo, a mainstay
of fair weekend.
The horse barn — one of
three original buildings at the
Oregon State Police/Contributed Photo
Excavation work is done Aug. 16-17, 2022, in the Finley Creek area by state forensic personnel in re-
sponse to recent interest shown by cadaver dogs brought in by the Finley Creek Jane Doe Task Force in-
volving the unidentified remains of the woman found in 1978.
No human bones found
at Finley Creek Jane Doe
site north of La Grande
BY DICK MASON
The Observer
ELGIN — The Finley Creek Jane Doe case,
which has taken many twists and turns over
the past four decades, has taken a pivot in the
wrong direction, but investigators, including
the Oregon State Police, are refusing to give up.
The Oregon State Police recently led an ex-
cavation project at a site near Finley Creek, 18
miles north of La Grande, where the remains of
an unidentified woman were found in August
1978.
The work was conducted Tuesday and
Wednesday, Aug. 16-17, by the OSP Forensics
Service Division, the State Medical Examin-
er’s Office Forensic Anthropologist, the OSP’s
major crimes detectives and members of the
Union County Search and Rescue team. The
operation was in response to recent interest
shown by cadaver dogs brought in by the Fin-
ley Creek Jane Doe Task Force involving the
unidentified remains of the woman found in
1978.
Union County Search and Rescue con-
ducted a grid search of approximately three
acres around the original burial site and the
recent locations of interest by the cadaver
dogs. Over 50 bones were located by the
search and rescue team. The State Medical Ex-
aminer’s Forensic Anthropologist examined
each of the bones and none of them were de-
termined to be of human origin, according to
an OSP press release.
Forensic scientists and detectives conducted
excavations at the two points of interest from
the cadaver dogs. They also excavated the orig-
inal burial site. The three locations were ex-
amined by sifting dirt and material through
screens in an attempt to locate even the smallest
of bone fragments or other evidence that could
be of use in determining an identity through
DNA testing.
“Unfortunately, nothing of evidentiary value
was discovered during the operation,” the press
release stated.
The OSP said the agency and other law en-
forcement partners will continue to stay in
contact with all interested parties in hopes of
successfully resolving the identity of the Fin-
ley Creek Jane Doe and bringing closure to her
family, according to the press release.
Melinda Jederberg, of La Grande, a leader of
the Finley Creek Jane Doe Task Force, which
she founded in 2019, said she appreciates the
hard work the OSP did at the site and said it has
helped the investigation move forward.
“We are very thankful for the work they did,”
she said.
Jeberberg hopes OSP can follow up its exca-
vation work with deeper digging at the two sites
where the two cadaver dogs alerted handlers
earlier that they smelled human bones under-
ground. Jeberberg said that after 44 years, hu-
man bones at the site may be deeper than the
depth excavated.
fairgrounds — fell into disre-
pair.
(The other original struc-
tures are the grandstand,
which was reconstructed in
2012, and exhibit hall, which
was rebuilt after suffering
snow damage during the win-
ter of 2016-2017.)
In 2019, a fundraising effort
began to build a new horse
barn, kickstarted by a grant
from the Leo Adler Commu-
nity Foundation.
In all, 85 donors contrib-
uted $95,000 to build the new
barn. Much of the money
came from individual dona-
tions, in addition to contribu-
tions from Baker County and
the county Transient Lodging
Tax.
Each horse stall features a
Dutch door — the top and
bottom open independently
— and the exterior is built
with blue-stained pine.
Smokey Creek Barn Com-
pany, owned by Donnie Hig-
gins, handled the construc-
tion.
It’s not quite finished — an
addition of 16 feet is planned
for storage with a six-foot slid-
ing door.
Investigators believe bones of the Finley
Creek Jane Doe may remain near the burial site
because when her skeletal remains were found
in 1978 an arm was missing, said Suzanne
Timms of Walla Walla, Washington, who is as-
sisting with the search as a volunteer. Timms is
certain the Finley Creek Jane Doe is her mother,
Patricia “Patty” Otto, of Lewiston, Idaho, who
has been missing since Aug. 31, 1976.
Timms also wants state police to dig deeper
at the two sites the cadaver dogs alerted han-
dlers.
“Cadaver dogs are right 95% of the time,”
Timms said, adding dogs can smell human
bones at least 13 feet deep.
Timms said if bones cannot be found at the
Finley Creek site that dental records could be
used to prove that her mother was the person
buried there. She said that a forensic dentist has
examined photos taken of the Finley Creek Jane
Doe’s teeth in 1978 and says that they match the
X-rays of her mother’s teeth her dentist in Lew-
iston had.
“He is convinced that they are from the same
person,” Timms said, adding she is hoping Or-
egon’s state forensic anthropologist will deter-
mine the Finley Creek Jane Doe is her mother
based on the dental records.
Timms first suspected that the Finley Creek
Jane Doe was her mother in 2021 when she
saw an image created by a forensic artist, An-
thony Redgrave, the operator of Redgrave Re-
search Forensic Services. Redgrave, who is from
Massachusetts, was assisting the Finley Creek
Jane Doe Task Force, and the image he created
looked very similar to Timms’ mother. The im-
ages were created based on photos of the skel-
etal remains found in 1978 — those bones are
believed to have been cremated by the state after
they were found, Timms said.
Other details have contributed to Timms’
belief that the Finley Creek Jane Doe is her
mother. The remains were found with a white
shirt and red pants, which is what Patty Otto
was last seen wearing before she disappeared in
1976.
Timms believes her mother was murdered in
Lewiston by her father and then taken to Finley
Creek where he buried her in a shallow grave.
The OSP’s autopsy records for the Finley
Creek Jane Doe, however, do not match those
of Patty Otto.
Timms believes the discrepancy is due to
an error made by the OSP’s medical examiner
while doing examinations of the skeletal re-
mains of two Jane Does in his office at about
the same time in 1978. She suspects he assigned
his reports to the wrong remains, because his
report for the second Jane Doe matches her
mother’s autopsy photos and dental records.
Timms applauds the work the state police is
now doing on the case, especially that of Sgt.
Sean Belding.
“He wants to get this right,” she said. “I have
faith in him.”
Heat
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The lingering heat could
allow mosquito populations
to hold on later than usual.
Hutchinson said the num-
ber of mosquitoes appearing
in traps — along with pos-
itive tests for West Nile —
usually drops with fall tem-
peratures.
“When we start getting
low temperatures at night or
when we get a good stretch
of cooler weather, that usu-
ally starts to shut things
down, but sometimes when
it stays hot for a while those
numbers will drag on a little
bit,” he said.
The good news, Hutchin-
son said, is that the Keating
Valley mosquitoes are now
under control, at least tem-
porarily.
Hutchinson said the dis-
trict conducted an aerial
spraying in the Keating Val-
ley area the evening of Aug.
29. He deploys treatments
once mosquito numbers
reach a certain threshold.
The application kept the
bugs at bay, based on results
from a trap on Aug. 30.
During an aerial spray,
a plane drops adulticide,
a pesticide used to treat
adult mosquitoes, over large
breeding sites of standing
water. The vector control
district, which is funded by
a pair of property tax lev-
ies, also uses trucks to “fog”
breeding sites.
“The trap results are re-
flecting that we did really
well with that (Aug. 29) ap-
plication,” Hutchinson said.
“The traps were really low
out in that area this week, so
that’s good news.”
And despite the continu-
Pederson said firefight-
ers and helicopters might
also be needed to prevent
the Nebo fire from moving
south into the Imnaha River
Canyon.
Although the extreme
weather has contributed to
both the Nebo and Stur-
gill fires spreading rapidly,
Pederson said he’s generally
happy with the effects the
fires are having. In particular
he’s pleased that the flames
are reducing the fuel load,
including dead trees that lit-
ter the ground near the Nebo
fire, remnants of the 1989
Canal fire and the 1994 Twin
Lakes fire.
Neither of those was man-
aged as a wilderness fire.
Pederson said the Stur-
gill fire, during its run on
Wednesday, did cause a bit
more high-severity burning
than he would prefer in the
upper part of the Sturgill
Creek drainage, based on
a reconnaissance flight he
made on Thursday.
However, Pederson also
said that that high-intensity
fire was expected, given the
weather. And he said the
mixture of burning intensity,
as well as some unburned
areas, creates the mosaic pat-
tern that fire managers like
to see.
The more intensely
burned areas will serve
as firebreaks when future
blazes happen, he said.
“This is hopefully going to
set us on the path where we
can have more natural fire
in the wilderness,” Pederson
said.
“Ultimately the goal is the
healthy and resilient forest
we want to have.”
ing heat, Hutchinson said
he’s already started to see a
drop in the number of mos-
quitoes in Baker County
traps, which usually coin-
cides with a change in type
of mosquito as well.
Culex tarsalis mosquitoes
are the most likely vectors
for West Nile, Hutchin-
son said, as opposed to the
floodwater mosquitoes more
prevalent in spring and
early summer, and when the
weather cools off in the fall.
Hutchinson said he’s sent
roughly double the amount
of mosquito pools to the
OSU lab this summer as
compared to last summer,
but this year’s positive case
count still hasn’t eclipsed last
year’s. Last year, 19 pools of
mosquitoes, along with one
horse and one human, tested
positive for West Nile virus
in Baker County, while 18
pools of mosquitoes and one
horse have tested positive in
2022.
Most people who contract
the virus don’t show any
symptoms. About one in five
people infected develop a fe-
ver and flu-like symptoms,
according to the U.S. Centers
for Disease Control and Pre-
vention.
Hutchinson advises peo-
ple who plan on enjoying the
Labor Day weekend outside
to take precautions against
mosquito bites by wearing
long pants and sleeves and
applying bug repellents con-
taining DEET, oil of lemon
or eucalyptus, or Picardin.
Other steps people can
take to limit the spread of
West Nile virus include re-
ducing areas of standing wa-
ter and making sure screen
doors are repaired and fit
tightly.
Halfway horse
racing
Danny Summers, who
grew up in Halfway, became
a professional horse jockey
and rode at major racetracks
on the West Coast and Can-
ada.
He died in 1937 at the
age of 22 when his horse fell
during a race at San Mateo,
California.
He is buried at the Pine
Valley Cemetery in Halfway.
Lisa Britton/Baker City Herald
Lynda Bird handles the scissors during a ribbon cutting to dedicate the new horse barn at the Pine Valley
Fairgrounds in Halfway on Thursday, Sept. 1, 2022. An effort to raise money for a new barn started in 2019.
In all, 85 donors contributed $95,000.
“It’ll make it convenient,”
Higgins said.
Fair and Rodeo
The 101st Baker County
Fair and Panhandle Rodeo is
Saturday through Monday,
Sept. 3-5.
Youth will show their ani-
mals on Saturday and Sunday.
The livestock auction happens
at 9 a.m. Monday, followed by
the parade at 12:30 p.m.
Fair admission is free.
The Panhandle Rodeo
happens Saturday and Sun-
day at 7 p.m., and Monday
at 2:30 p.m. Mule races are
held during the rodeo perfor-
mances.
Tickets are $15 for reserved
seats, $12 general admission,
$6 for ages 6-12, and free for
ages 5 and younger. Admis-
sion is free for veterans on
Monday.
Throughout the weekend,
the midway will feature mu-
sic, vendors, concessions and
games for the kids. On Sun-
day, the EV Locals will per-
form from 3-6 p.m.
On Saturday and Sunday,
the kids dance starts at 9 p.m.
at the Pine Valley Grange Hall.
After the rodeo, on Satur-
day and Sunday, Frank Carl-
son will play live for an adult
cowboy dance on the midway.
A cowboy dinner will be avail-
able for $15.