The Coolidge examiner. [volume] (Coolidge, Ariz.) 1930-current, 1938-04-14

Washington. D. C.-WNU Service.
INREGON, Land of Wind
Il ing Waters" was orig
~ inally solidly covered
with timber from the Cascade
mountains to the Pacific.
Douglas frs, which constitute
more than two-thirds of the
timber cut, are the giants of
this forest. They are in places
found $50 feet high
But eastern Oregon, robbed of its
sky moisture by the Cascade range,
was not neglected by Nature. Its
soil is rich, the debris of old lava
plains, blanketed with ashes from
the belching Cascade craters that
drifted eastward on prevailing
winds in ancient times.
Irrigation projects have brought
expanding and diversified crop
areas and newborn cities into this
plateau region, otherwise limited to
livestock and the growth of hardy
grains.
In eastern and western Oregon
alike. the Columbia gives the pulse
heat to modern industry.
Hardly less important than nav
igable Columbia to eastern Oregon
are its snow-fed tributaries that flow
from the south through extensive
areas of little rain. The boisterous
and beautiful Deschutes, receiving
the drainage of snow peaks on the
eastern slopes of the Cascades; the
poky, aged John Day. draining an
immense area of low mountains,
both empty into the great river
above Cello.
Some of the farms along the Co
lumbia are encircled by tall poplars,
planted as windbreaks and protec-
ton against drifting sand. At Una
tilla the Columbia River highway
merges with the Old Oregon trail
and swings south from the Columbia
along the Umatilla river to Pendle-
ton.
Pendleton's Big Roundup.
Pendleton is an adventure. From
the moment of entering this wheat
metropolis during Roundup time.
one feels part of the big show. A
thousand cowboys, cowgirls, Indi-
ans, and stage drivers assemble
here each year, from the Rio Grande
to Calgary, to enact a drama in
which the old sports and the passing
life Of the frontier West relive in
pauseless thrill.
The Roundup is not CONNER
cial show, but vast community
enterprise, owned by the people of
Pendleton, who contribute months
of work without compensation. They
have no pompous committees with
labeled badges; the whole town dons
sombreros and continues to act with
refreshing naturalness.
Down on the Roundup grounds,
ex-cowboys, doing odd jobs around
the gates, spin tales Of days when
they, too, rode in the arena. In
dams gamble for dimes with a
stick, in a game similar TO Button,
button, who's got the button?"
Farmers arrive with sacks of wheat
as admittance money. An old chief,
unsteadied by one drink too many,
searches for his tepee among the
hundred that look alike.
You stop to watch an old squaw
saddling a horse for her modern,
silk-stockinged daughter while she
j.. mutters, Indian girl getting all
same white girl. All she know is
how to ride car
Indians and Pageants.
Aloof, apparently Indifferent, are
proud Indians from the Umatills,
Bannock. Nez Perez, Cayuse, and
Yakima tribes in gorgeous beaded
habiliments. Their costumes are
priceless heirlooms, preserved and
handed down from generation to
generation for the Round Up. while
the Indians themselves grow into
conventional mold.
At night the wild, wide-open, en-
bryo gambling town of Happy Can
yon stages pageant, depicting the
days of the red man and the COM
| ing of the whites, in a classic
drama. The Westward Ho parade
on Saturday morning is the grand
| finale
After this sombreros may be hung
up for another year, but in Pendle-
ton the spirit of the Old West has
been famed again into thrilling
| freshness.
Southeast Of Pendleton the Old