STORIES FROM THE PAST

50 years ago

The county Board of Supervisors this morning ordered administrative officer Roy Cooper to draw up a new county policy which would assure that indigent people who die in the county would be given funeral services.

A considerable furor was raised recently when Frye Chapel — which holds a contract with the county — refused to take the body of a decease county hospital patient to a Catholic Church funeral before he was buried in the Potters Field south of El Centro.

The contract the county holds with Frye does not insist that the mortician take the remains to a church for funeral services.

Supervisor Tunney Williams pointed out that subsequent to the incident referred to, Frye Chapel had voluntarily taken the remains of another indigent person to a church for services.

40 years ago

Imperial County may someday have a unique historical monument thanks to the efforts of archeology instructor Jay von Wehrloff, his students at the Imperial Valley College and the college museum staff.

The group is presently excavating a rise of land 3.5 miles due north of Seeley, just south of Worthington Road on the west bank of the New River, which was the site of the only fort built by the Mexican government in California — 151 years ago.

The Spanish government ruled Mexico as a colony until the Mexican Revolution was successful in 1821.

The Mexican Republic was not founded until 1824. All the presidios and nearly all the missions in California already had been completed by that time.

Apparently the fort built near Seeley is the only one ever constructed by the Mexican government in California said von Wehrloff.

According to the best estimates of William Farris, local historian and IVC Museum director, the fort was occupied only for the first four months of 1826. An attack by the hostile Kumeyaay Indians forced it to be abandoned.

In that single short struggle six Mexican soldiers and 28 Indians were killed in a battle that saw Mexican lances and a few flintlock rifles combat India bows and arrows said Farris.

After that indecisive skirmish the Mexican soldiers were returned to their home base at the Mission San Diego de Alcala, and the fort was apparently never used again.

While the remains of the fort have been leveled in the past eight years, several historical documents verify that the fort was standing nearly intact as late as 1900.

30 years ago

The new high school proposed for El Centro may have the equivalent of Brawley’s Palmer Auditorium or San Diego State University’s Rodney Auditorium in Calexico — with a little financial help from the city of El Centro.

School board President Bruce Anderholt on Wednesday night proposed the City Council join in an agreement to enlarge the multipurpose room now planned for the new school to an “auditorium” to seat up to 1,500 people.

20 years ago

IMPERIAL — The two local groups lobbying on an Imperial Valley water conservation and transfer program made progress Thursday in building a consensus community position on water marketing.

One thing they agreed is the issue goes beyond the two groups.

“I’m truly bored with people trying to make this a fight between two sides,” said Brawley farmer Louise Willey, a member of the Coalition for a Fair Water Policy. We need to make it a community affair.”

Underlying the Imperial Irrigation District’s water conservation advisory board meeting was a sense of the importance today’s decisions on water issues will have on the Imperial Valley’s future.