A weekly look back compiled by the Clark County Historical Museum from The Columbian archives available at columbian.newspapers.com or at the museum.
- 100 years ago
On the last weekend of December 1923, the Women’s Christian Temperance Union chucked more than 3,000 gallons of liquor down the drain on the backside of the courthouse. There were too many bottles to be broken one-by-one, “so a discarded bed spring was (brought) out and placed over the drain,” and boxes of bottles were placed on the springs and broken with “healthy wallops with a sledge hammer.” Beer, liquor and wine from the smashed cases “spurted over the onlookers.” The anti-booze affair occurred after Sheriff William A. Thompson and his deputies raided a local 150-gallon still.
- 75 years ago
In a year-end summation, Clark County probation officer D.M. Gilpil reported on Jan. 3, 1949, about a “substantial increase in the theft and disregard of personal and property rights” by county teenagers. While the increases were not alarming, the “actual juvenile delinquencies for the year stand at 101 based on the present youthful population of 18,000.” The previous year, the county had 108 “official cases from a population of 17,429 youngsters.”
- 50 years ago
On Jan. 4, 1974, three Ridgefield City Council members resigned rather than comply with Washington’s recently passed Public Disclosure Act. Citing disagreement with the “disclosure of financial dealings” as the reasons for their notices, Dan Benedict, Grace Kasper and Lavon Roe announced they would depart office on Dec. 31. Roe was near the end of her term and didn’t run for reelection, while Benedict and Kasper resigned in the middle of their respective terms.
