STORIES FROM THE PAST
50 years ago
Three jail escapees with records for violence were caught early today by Border Patrol officers on Highway 86 between Westmorland and Salton City.
The escape had been reported by the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office at Stockton yesterday afternoon.
A car fitting the description in the alarm was spotted by Border Patrol officers A. L. Arnold and William Briggs. They stopped it at 12:12 a.m., and brought the three men and their woman companion to the Border Patrol checkpoint at the intersection of Highways 86 and 78.
An officer of the California Patrol arrested the three men, William John Randle, 38, Frank Hernandez, 27, and Paul Ramirez, 20.
A number of units from the Imperial County Sheriff’s Office had also responded.
40 years ago
The current overall profit situation for Imperial County farms has not been as bad in at least 10 years, and maybe longer, according to Adolf F. Van Maren, director of the University of California Agriculture Extension, El Centro.
“This sorry crop situation is what I consider quite significant,” he said in an interview. “I think overall we’re facing a real bad year.”
Van Maren said that even though 1976 saw the second highest gross farming returns ever in Imperial County, most of the top money producing crops were not profitable for growers, and that outlook is not changing. Cattle, for example, was the county’s largest single money-producer last year. But Van Maren estimated that investors in county livestock actually lost just over $19 million dollars in that period.
30 years ago
With nets in hand and a tank full of sleepy fish in the back of their pickup truck, a contingent of Imperial Irrigation District scientists Monday carried their battle against hydrilla across the international border. Hydrilla, the aquatic weed that choked local irrigation canals for years before the IID imported sterile grass carp to nibble it down to size, has infested about 38 miles of canals in the northwest portion of the Mexicali Valley. Officials there fear this could result in the re-infestation of IID canals.
So early Monday morning, IID biologist Michael Remington anesthetized 50 grass carp to prevent injury during the transfer process, loaded them into a water tank and headed for Mexicali where the fish were scooped out of the tank and released into a quarter mile section of hydrilla-infested canal.
This was the beginning of a demonstration project that U.S. officials hope will lead to the release of carp throughout infested area.
20 years ago
CHIRIACO SUMMIT — Located 30 miles east of Indio, this remote site is known as an Interstate 10 rest stop to some. For 85,000 visitors a year, Chiriaco Summit is the site of a museum honoring legendary Gen. George Patton, who trained troops here for battle in World War II. But for siblings Margit Rusche and Bob Chiriaco, its home base, a development started 64 years ago by their parents, who both died last year. The area includes a county airport, small motel, recreational vehicle mobile home park, restaurant, gift shop, garage, towing service and a gas station with a mini-mart.
It’s a growing community that lacks commercial power. The area had been powered by a 360-kilowatt generator, but the generator blew up in January. The Chiriaco family used a backup 150-kilowatt generator unit until April, when the Imperial Irrigation District lent the family a 500-kilowatt generator.