STORIES FROM THE PAST

50 years ago

Opium poppies are being grown in the Valley.

The Sheriff’s Office reported this morning that “many” of the plants, had been dug up by deputies yesterday.

Sheriff Ray Rowe said that the plants were being grown by gardeners who did not know that their pretty poppies were of the variety from which opium is extracted. Opium, in turn, is the basis for heroin.

The Sheriff declined to say where the poppies had been found. He said that the gardeners were obviously innocent, and that he did not wish to embarrass anybody. He said that the plants had been spotted by a deputy who is a narcotics expert. The office of the County Agricultural Commissioner confirmed that the plants were indeed opium poppies, or papaver somniferum.

40 years ago

CALEXICO — For more than 20 years Joseph O’Rear’s ambition has been to become a port director for the U.S. Bureau of Customs.

He reached that goal this week and begins his new assignment as U.S. Customs port director. In a way, the new job is a return engagement for O’Rear; he began his career in 1957 as a U.S. Immigration Service patrol officer at the Port of Entry.

“My ambition has always been to become a port director,” he said Wednesday. O’Rear, 50, succeeds Charles Smith, who retired last December.

30 years ago

WASHINGTON (MNS) — A moratorium on the designation of Foreign Trade Zones now pending in Congress could dash chances for the trade zone that Imperial County applied for in March.

Rep. Duncan Hunter has asked Secretary of Commerce Malcolm Baldrige to help expedite the application by the Private Industry Council in El Centro to establish a Foreign Trade Zone in Calexico.