The Blue Mountain eagle. (John Day, Or.) 1972-current, August 08, 2018, Image 1

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    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