STORIES FROM THE PAST
50 years ago
The richest and best cowboy in the world is conducting a school in Brawley that has more hard knocks than Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.
Larry Mahan, who at 24 is world champion rodeo cowboy for the second straight year, Wednesday began the second session of bruising instruction for bareback riding, saddle bronc riding and bull riding. The class is the Cattle Call Arena.
As a school, Mahan’s group tackled the various problems of keeping aboard a hostile backbone in a practical rather than theoretical way.
Fifteen rodeo hopefuls — most in late teens and early 20s — started out in Mahan’s first pedagogical attempt last week and five received significant injuries within the week, including broken ribs, dislocated joints and a fracture here and there.
“Everyone was so bruised by the last day we decided to let them off a day early,” Mahan said.
40 years ago
The new year was only 41 minutes old when El Centro Community Hospital recorded the first birth of 1978 in Imperial Valley.
Baby girl Garcia weighed seven pounds, one-half ounce and was 20 1/2 inches long. She was born at 12:41 a.m. today.
Her mother is Guadalupe Garcia, 28, who has one other child. The family resides in Holtville.
Calexico Hospital and Pioneers Memorial in Brawley had yet to record a 1978 birth as of this morning.
Baby girl Garcia qualifies for a host of gifts offered to the first infant of the New Year by El Centro merchants.
30 years ago
Political pressure from residents around the Salton Sea has killed plans for a toxic waste incinerator near Salton City, according to the project’s sponsor.
A Costa Mesa firm, Cal Land Financial, last July proposed building a $100 million project designed to incinerate up to 350,000 tons of toxic wastes per year north of Salton City.
“Politically it’s too hot,” Jim Scott of Cal Land said today. “It’s the right place to put it environmentally. I like it better than the one on the east side, but you can’t get any support.”
The company is now investigating building a smaller project near Flowing Wells on the east side of the Highline Canal, Scott said.
Representatives of the Salton Sea Legal Defense Group, which led opposition to the project, said they were pleased the Salton City site had been discarded.
20 years ago
SALTON SEA BEACH — It goes to show what a community can accomplish when it bands together.
After residents of this and other seaside communities made their disgust and displeasure with the current state of crime and drug abuse in their area known to county and state law enforcement officials a few weeks back, those officials have stood up, taken notice and already begun to crack down on the Salton Sea beach communities’ unsavory population.
In a day-long, multi-agency sweep of the area Tuesday, officers and officials from the county Sheriff’s Office, county Probation Department, county Narcotics Task Force, District Attorney’s Office and California Highway Patrol, as well as state parole agents, arrested 11 individuals on a variety of offenses.
Sheriff’s Sgt. Jesse Obeso, one of the sweep coordinators, said, “This was a multi-agency operation targeting the drug offenders, parole violators and probation violators in the communities of Salton Sea Beach, Desert Shores and Salton City. Some of the arrests were narcotics violations, weapons violations and parole and probation violations.”