GRANT UNION VOLLEYBALL PREVIEW – PAGE A8 The Blue Mountain EAGLE Grant County’s newspaper since 1868 W edNesday , a ugust 8, 2018 • N o . 32 • 16 P ages • $1.00 www.MyEagleNews.com FBI assisting in case of missing couple Terry and Sharon Smith disappeared following house fire By Richard Hanners Blue Mountain Eagle The Grant County Sheriff’s Office re- ports that the Federal Bureau of Investi- gation and the Oregon State Police are as- sisting in the investigation of a couple who went missing following a fire in the Lay- cock Creek area July 17-18. Terry and Sharon Smith, the owners of a home on Nan’s Rock Road that burned to the ground in the fire, are still missing, as is their silver or light gray 2006 Toyota Ta- coma with Oregon license 714EGG, Sheriff Glenn Palmer said in an Aug. 2 press re- lease. “The sheriff’s office and FBI have made some contacts in this case and conducted numerous interviews,” Palmer said. “Due to the fact this case is criminal in nature, those findings cannot be shared publicly.” Two cadaver dogs from the Crook Coun- ty Sheriff’s Office searched the scene fol- lowing the fire with negative results, Palmer said. See MISSING, Page A16 Sharon and Terry Smith MYSTERY OF CHINESE MINING REVEALED Archaeologists unearth new information about immigrant miners By Richard Hanners Blue Mountain Eagle s word got out in June 1862 about gold in Whiskey Gulch near Can- yon City, 10,000 miners flocked to the high desert area of Eastern Or- egon to strike it rich. Chinese min- ers working the placer diggings in California and southwest Oregon around Jacksonville soon heard the news and joined the trek. Word also reached Guangdong province in Chi- na, the home of Chinese mining companies that had operated across Southeast Asia since 1700. By 1870, according to census records, 42 percent of Grant County’s population and 69 percent of its miners were Chinese. These immigrants shared one thing with Eu- ro-Americans who flocked to Oregon — a desire to prosper from opportunities offered by the un- tapped resources of America’s West. But their unfamiliar language, dress, food and other customs posed a hurdle for Chinese miners, and as anti-Chinese sentiment hardened into leg- islation in the 1880s, the immigrants found them- selves forced out of the land of opportunity. The result was a legacy of misunderstandings about the Chinese who helped develop the West in the late 19th century. A Wrong assumptions Contributed photo Chelsea Rose, an archaeologist at Southern Oregon University and co-leader on excavations of several Chinese mining camp sites in the Middle Fork John Day River area dating to the 1870s, sits atop a cooking feature discovered at a former log cabin. In a talk at the Canyon City Community Hall on July 20, Chelsea Rose outlined three assump- tions about the immigrant Chinese that have been proven wrong through research in historical docu- ments and diggings at mining camps. An archaeologist at the Southern Oregon Uni- versity Laboratory of Anthropology, Rose has conducted research in Jacksonville, home of Or- egon’s first Chinatown, and made two field trips See MYSTERY, Page A16 The Eagle/Richard Hanners Bobby Saunters, a member of the Blue Mountain Ranger District Heritage Team, searches for artifacts at a Chinese mining camp in the Middle Fork area. Dave Root, left, current president of the Oregon Archaeological Society, holds flags used to mark detects. Lawmakers will continue shoring up marijuana regulations Report: Oregon produces six times more marijuana than can be consumed By Claire Withycombe Capital Bureau In the wake of a new law enforcement report claiming that overproduction of canna- bis remains a problem in Or- egon, some state lawmakers say they’ll continue to work on improving regulation and enforcement of the state’s cannabis laws when they con- EO Media Group Marijuana plants grow in a high tunnel at a farm near McMinnville. A report funded by the federal government says Oregon produces more than 2 million pounds of marijuana each year, more than six times what it says can reasonably be consumed. vene for a session next year. Meanwhile, the Oregon Liquor Control Commission, which regulates recreational cannabis, says the report and the data it uses require more scrutiny. Last week’s report was authored by the Oregon-Ida- ho High Intensity Drug Traf- ficking Area, or HIDTA, program. HIDTA is a federal program that aims to coordi- nate law enforcement efforts between agencies and gov- ernments and to reduce illicit drug trafficking. The report appears to bolster claims by the U.S. Attorney for Oregon, Billy Williams, who has said the amount of cannabis produced in the Beaver State far ex- ceeded the amount that Or- egonians could reasonably consume and raises concerns about diversion of the prod- uct across state lines. Oregon’s estimated an- nual production capacity ex- ceeds 2 million pounds, “far outpacing annual state con- sumption demands,” which range from 186,100-372,600 pounds. The report also pulls to- gether a wide range of other data points, from canna- bis-related emergency room visits to youth exposure to cannabis advertising. Oregonians voted to legal- ize recreational cannabis for adults 21 and older in 2014 via ballot measure. Since then, the Legislature has been working on ways to stand up the regulatory system for legal adult use. Oregonians voted to legalize medical marijuana in 1998. U.S. Attorney General Jeff See POT, Page A16