This Day in History
100 Year
Some fifty members of Company H, Idaho National Guard, arrived here last Thursday afternoon and were immediately assigned to guard duty at the Moravia and Katka tunnels on the Great Northern railway. Twelve men are stationed at Moravia where the two tunnels are guarded day and night and no one without properly signed papers are permitted to enter, 24 men are stationed in the Katka district where there are four tunnels.
J.N. Norton is wearing a couple of well bruised eyes as a result of an entanglement last Friday with a 16-year-old-horse he owns.
The horse became frightened when some colts ran up behind it and knocked Mr. Norton down. Mr. Norton says that in the future he will be mighty careful around old horses which are supposed to be gentle and of an exemplary disposition.
Homer Dayton, a federal prisoner being held on the charge of resisting federal officers and J.H. Donnelly, a state prisoner charged with grand larceny, escaped from the county jail between the hours of seven and eight o’clock last evening, securing their liberty by filing through a bar in the southwest window of the jail and bending it back far enough to permit the passage of their bodies, with the aid of a four foot length of a cedar post.
Town Marshal Worley confiscated two cases of whiskey in pint bottles and two quart bottles Sunday. The whiskey was found in empty Great Northern freight cars. Worley learned that seven or eight gunny sacks full of whiskey were unloaded at Crossport Sunday.
50 Year
The Bonners Ferry high school track team placed third in an invitational meet held at Post Falls last weekend.
School records were broken by Jim Knapple with an outstanding performance in running the two-mile race in 10:30 minutes to break the old BFHS record by 11.5 seconds.
School records were also broken in the 440-yard and 880-yard relay events. On the team were Dale Yount, Rick Owsley, Steve Glen and Steve Foust. They won the 440 relay with a time of 47.00 seconds to better the old mark of 47.4, and they took the 880 event in 1:37.2 minutes, six-tenths of a second under the old record.
What started out to be a spring clean-up grass fire ended up in a full-blown conflagration Monday at the Simon Francis residence eight miles north of Bonners Ferry.
It is reported that a fire was set to burn some dead grass and brush along the highway. The wind blew the flames out of control and set fire to the house and several outbuildings, all of which were burned to the ground. There being no water available there was little that could be done to save the buildings.
Probate Judge Ralph Mills reports that a juvenile boy this week was sentenced to 10 days in the juvenile ward of the county jail following violation of terms of probation resulting from an original charge of beer in possession and consuming. The youth was apprehended after going out of state and remaining overnight.
15 Year
Three weeks before Rick Riekena graduated from Bonners Ferry High in 1970, he lost his graduation ring while swimming with friends in Kramer Lake, a five-acre, spring-fed lake so deep that Andre Kramer recalled “we gave up trying to find the bottom of it a long time ago.” Fast forward to early spring of this year when Don Kramer decided to dredge Kramer Lake to dump in a load of peat moss. There on the banks was a 1970 Bonners Ferry High school class ring with a yellow stone and the initials “R.R” engraved on the side. “Wow”, said Riekena.
With tears glistening in her eyes and a smile lighting her face, 16-year old Jennifer Funkhouser made a fairy tale come true as she was named Bonners ferry Jr. Miss 2002-2003 in front of a sold-out crowd at Fry Auditorium April 20. Erin Sherven was runner-up, second runner-up was Madison Dinning and third runner-up was Amy Anderson.