Dispatches from history: Western Washington County May 31, 1923
A review of the dirt and plank road between Forest Grove and Astoria. This and more in this week's edition of Dispatches from History, chronicling 1923 in Gales Creek, Banks, and beyond.
In this column, we take a look back one hundred years ago in western Washington County. This week, the clips come from the Washington County News-Times edition published May 31, 1923. Want more local history? Visit the Banks Historical Society online at www.bankshistory.org for Banks-area history, and Friends of Historic Forest Grove, which often works in the Gales Creek area, online at www.fhfg.org.
Gales Creek Journal Weekly Newsletter | June 7, 2025
�Volume 1, issue #5
Good evening, Gales Creek Journal readers! This newsletter contains this week's news, and an important notice
Golf ball sized hail possible, live music at the Gales Creek Tavern, a neighborhood gathering inside the Gales Creek School and more in this week's newsletter!
Heading to Banks from Gales Creek? Take a different route while a fallen tree is cleared from Highway 6 west of Banks. Check Tripcheck for live traffic updates.
Following steep declines in school attendance in the immediate aftermath of the pandemic, Oregon students are slowly beginning to show up more regularly to class and a growing number of ninth graders are on track to graduate on time.�
A proposed toll road linking Forest Grove and Tillamook faced opposition, but Gales Creek residents would take any road they could get, according to a 1925 newspaper article.
"County Jail Filled to Overflow With Arrests Made" including Ernest Narver, Frank Kearns, Thomas Young, and Roy Kearns, all arrested at Balm Grove on liquor possession charges in Prohibition-era Gales Creek.
People are shooting exploding targets and firing hot lead into dry vegetation in the Tillamook Forest with predictable results: Five wildfires since May. These fires are all preventable, said Acting Forest Grove District Forester Stephanie Beall.
