75 years ago, March 1, 1938
• Prosecutor Paul O. Manley and Sheriff Jeff Bartell said today they would invoke the indecent exposure law and arrest any nudists who start practicing what they preach. The threat was made in response to complaints from three Grays Harbor ministers that “the Beavers,” a sunbathers group, had been organized to open a colony on a 300-acre tract near Montesano.
The tract assertedly is the oldtime “Rat ranch,” named by a former muskrat rancher and includes a beaver lake.
One minister stated he believed nudism is “immoral conduct” while another wrote that “I don’t think the establishment of a nudist colony here is any of my business. As it is, there are plenty of mental nudists here already.”
• John Hannula Jr. Fish Co. at the foot of D Street in Aberdeen is featuring Lenten specials including Columbia River salmon for 28-cents a pound; Columbia River smelt for 10-cents a pound; fresh Westport crab for 15 to 35-cents a pound and fresh razor clams cleaned for 25-cents a pint.
50 years ago, March 1, 1963
• The Longview City Council has agreed to construction of the Nutty Narrows Bridge. A resolution authorizing the bridge over the city’s main thoroughfare was approved Thursday night. It will carry hungry squirrels from City Park to a feeding station in an office building courtyard. Several squirrels have been killed crossing the street and a contractor offered to build a four-inch wide bridge at no cost to the city. It will be suspended 20 feet above the 70-foot wide street.
• Craig Wellington, guest artist for the forthcoming Choir Festival at the Central Park Methodist Community Church, has been active in Harbor music circles since his student days in Aberdeen.
Wellington is a graduate of Weatherwax High School, Grays Harbor College and Washington State University and has also done graduate work at WSU. He taught music in Idaho before coming to Grays Harbor College where this is his second year as a music instructor.
He will be accompanied by Mrs. Eugene Stensager.
25 years ago, March 1, 1988
• Mike Welch of Cosmopolis decided to do a little spring cleaning yesterday and discovered a piece of history most people would prefer only reading about.
It was a 75mm World War I artillery shell.
He found it leaning against a barn hidden by tall grass at his Dewitt Drive home. A military spokesman determined the shell was a training round and took it back to Fort Lewis.
• A survey released today says that the threat of malpractice suits caused 12 percent of obstetricians to close their practices last year and that two-thirds leave the field before age 55.
Grays Harbor County’s two obstetricians each pay more than $50,000 a year for malpractice insurance said Dr. Leland Anderson who practices with Dr. William Kilgore.
Anderson said because of the threat of malpractice suits family physicians here will no longer deliver babies.
Compiled by Karen Barkstrom from the archives of The Daily World.
