World gone by
Published 1:30 am Friday, January 2, 2026
85 YEARS AGO
December 30, 1940
Local merchants will donate a long list of gifts to the parents of the first baby born on the Harbor in 1941 including a bottle of Hay’s homogenized milk every day for 30 days from Hay’s Dairy; a walnut-finished child’s chair from Wise & Hepner furniture; a lovely baby shawl from George J. Wolff Co; an electric baby bottle warmer from Brennan’s; a beautiful baby spoon and fork from Wiitamaki Jewelry Store; a Calometer dime bank with the baby’s name imprinted in gold from First Federal Savings & Loan Association of Aberdeen and a Johnson & Johnson gift box from Central Drug Co.
December 31, 1940
Lord Woolton, Britain food minister, warned the nation in a broadcast from London today that it would have to eat less in 1941 and that the danger from German attack on Britain’s food supplies was much worse than in the last war.
“The enemy is making a direct attack on our food ships and is sinking quite a number of them,” he said. “We ate nearly as much in 1940 as we did in 1939,” he said, “and we shall have to do with less meat in 1941.”
January 1, 1941
Humptulips valley “went modern” with the advent of electricity last night.
A farm wife flipped a switch and coffee bubbled quickly on her shiny new range, where a few days ago she slaved over a cranky cook stove.
A dairyman moved his hand and gleaming automatic milking machines cut the time and trouble of an arduous job, and children of the valley, some for the first time in their lives, saw Christmas trees lighted by glowing globes.
January 2, 1941
Totem grocery stores at the corner of G and Wishkah and at 110 N. Broadway are advertising 12-ounce cans of corned beef for 19¢; four cans Libby’s deviled meat for 15¢; five pounds of rice for 25¢; 10 pounds of Aunt Jemima cornmeal for 25¢; two dozen eggs for 59¢; beef steaks for 21¢ a pound and country style pork sausage for 10¢ a pound.
January 3, 1941
A new era in log transportation, developed almost unnoticed by Grays Harbor men, bids fair to revise this district’s industrial future.
It involves the bearing of huge log cargoes here by ocean-going barges and tugs, as successfully demonstrated by the Ocean Transportation company, headed by R.J. “Dick” Ultican of the Ultican Tug Boat company.
During the last days of 1940, the company’s huge new sea-going barge, OTC No. 1 dumped about 1,200,000 feet of timber in Grays Harbor, an equivalent to an average “fair” yield of about 50 acres of virgin timber, Ultican estimates. The logs were brought here from Oregon in two loads without fuss or furor and another 20 to 30 “acres” of timber is being stowed at Astoria right now for towing here.
60 YEARS AGO
December 29, 1965
The Small Business Administration has approved a $350,000 loan for the development of a fish processing industry in Aberdeen, it was announced jointly today by Senators Henry M. Jackson and Warren G. Magnuson and Congresswoman Julia Butler Hansen.
The loan is at 5 1/2 percent for 10 years and will assist in the development of a plant in East Aberdeen that will house Pacific Protein, Inc. The plant will create 40 new jobs.
December 30, 1965
A pre-dawn fire damaged part of the Beacon Burger Restaurant in Ocean Shores today and left the remainder of the building a shamble of broken glass and melted plastic.
December 31, 1965
Hold your ears, Dad! Beatle-mania, once thought a passing fad, apparently is here to stay, and hep teens now see the long-hairs from London as pace-setters in a whole new trend of music yet to be explored. Some of them assert that Elvis Presley is for old people.
A solid 48 percent of teens surveyed say the Beatles will have the greatest influence on pop singing. Another 21 percent picked Presley. A quarter percent of those polled chose other English groups as well as Sonny & Cher, Bob Dylan and Herman’s Hermits.
Lee Arthaud, the promising young senior pole vaulter from Hoquiam, is The Aberdeen World’s choice as athlete of the year on Grays Harbor.
Lee, the third member of the family to carry on the pole vaulting tradition, owns the distinction of having jumped higher than any prep vaulter in state history – 14 feet, 6 inches.
January 1, 1966
Pope Paul VI today appealed to the presidents of both South and North Vietnam — and for the first time to the leaders of Communist China and the Soviet Union — to help end the Vietnam war. In his annual Christmas message to the world on Dec. 23, the pontiff asked for “just and sincere negotiations.” He called his Christmas message a new peace plea and reminded world leaders, “Stop and think. True wisdom is to be found in peace.”
January 3, 1966
Aberdeen’s long proposed industrial route to Port Dock was opened at brief ceremonies this morning.
Mayor Walt Failor snipped a bright fluorescent orange ribbon near the railroad crossing at the west end of Wishkah Street. Over 40 people stood in the cold wind to watch the ceremony officially opening the Port of Grays Harbor industrial access road.
Rudy Anderson, city engineer, and Dann Madden, port engineer, were two of the proudest men at the ceremony as they watched many hours of hard work pay off.
A Hoquiam man and his son and stepson were swept to sea and presumed drowned Sunday after their small rubber boat overturned in the mouth of Raft River about 40 miles northwest of Hoquiam.
They were Charles Cox, 37, Robert Cox, 18, and Robert Bentz, 15. The elder Cox’s wife said the family had been searching the beach for glass floats from Japanese fishing nets when her husband and two boys decided to cross the river.
A 75-mile-an-hour wind was blowing.
35 YEARS AGO
December 29, 1990
A water treatment plant at the ITT Rayonier pulp mill in Hoquiam, is operating again after a frozen pipe forced the discharge of about 10,000 pounds of sodium hydroxide into Grays Harbor on Christmas.
The pulp-cooking chemical, known as caustic soda and considered toxic and corrosive in its pure form, normally flows into a storage tank, but the company reports the frozen line caused it to be diverted directly into the secondary treatment plant.
December 30, 1990
“People often say that junior high kids present the toughest challenge for a teacher,” says Bob Braden, journalism teacher at Miller Junior High in Aberdeen, “but after working with them for 16 years I can say that most of them are like M&M’s — There’s often a shell on the outside, but the soft sweetness exists within.
“Nothing reinforced my view more than when my journalism class went to the Grays Harbor Convalescent Center on Nov. 28. Our purpose was to interview senior citizens about their favorite Christmas story or experience,” Braden continued. “For some of the students, it was the first time they had been exposed to the grim realities of aging. It was a time of widely opened eyes, smiles, hugs and kisses and tears, tears, tears.”
December 31, 1990
Iraq on Monday ordered 17-year-olds to report for military duty, the youngest yet to be called for possible combat in the gulf crisis. European officials indicated they were ready to hold both direct and indirect talks with Iraq.
Tens of thousands of American soldiers on ships in the Persian Gulf and in desert encampments in Saudi Arabia marked another holiday far from home.
January 1, 1991
For the second year in a row the editorial staff of The Daily World has chosen the debate over spotted owls and logging as the area’s top story. Second on the list were the floods.
Twice in 1990, Grays Harbor was declared a disaster area because of flooding. Number 3 on the list is the strike against ITT Rayonier that began Aug. 26 and is now in its fifth month. Number 4 was the November elections that produced some surprises, the biggest being the ease with which Congresswoman Jolene Unsoeld was re-elected over her Republican challenger Bob Williams.
The storm-tossed tall ships project came in number five on the list with Port of Grays Harbor woes listed number six.
The Quinault Indian Nation spend the summer of 1990 gripped in tension after a police shooting left a young man dead and another wounded during the annual Taholah Days celebration on July 4. That story was ranked seventh on The Daily World list, followed by the Deeper Draft project actually beginning construction in the spring of the year.
Number 9 on the list was the number of homicides across Grays Harbor — a total of seven violent slayings countywide. And rounding out the top 10 stories for 1990 were the two plane crashes north of the Wynoochee Dam in September.
January 2, 1991
After 30 years punctuated with wild guesses and methodical calculations Ethel Keiser finally got the drop on Hoquiam’s annual rainfall.
The retired first grade teacher from Hoquiam came within two-hundredths of an inch of hitting the 1990 total right on the nose.
For the record, the total was 85.15 inches, according to Eric Grinde of the Hoquiam Lions Club.
Mrs. Keiser is the $1,000 grand prize winner in the Lions Club annual Rain Derby.
The wettest year in Hoquiam in recorded history was in that memorable 1933, when 113.4 inches of rain fell, according to Lions Club statistics. The driest year was 1985 when only 40.38 inches of rain fell.
About 250 teenagers participated in the second annual New Year’s Eve Blowout at the Hopkins Building in Aberdeen. The “clean and sober” all-night party included a lip sync contest, movies and lots of food.
January 3, 1991
Facing “an unparalleled financial problem in the very near future,” the Port of Grays Harbor has asked Gov. Booth Gardner for more than $13.5 million in state “bootstrap” funding so it can continue to wean itself from the log export business.
A letter to Gardner from Port Executive Director Cliff Muller and Port Commissioner John Stevens asks for direct aid to pave cargo yards, build warehouses, remodel the Westport Marina and hire more salesmen to sell the Port’s services around the world. It also wants help making bond payments for the next three years.
The CareCab gave nearly 400 free rides home to holiday celebrants during the yuletide season, a slight increase over last year’s level.
“We had close to 100 (calls) on New Year’s Eve,” said Cheryl Barrett, CareUnit program manager.
Compiled from the archives of The Daily World by Karen Barkstrom, Editorial Assistant at The Daily World. You can contact her at karen.barkstrom@thedailyworld.com or call her at 360-537-3925.
