STORIES FROM THE PAST

50 years ago

U.S. officials revealed late this morning they have a report that a light airplane crashed at 2:30 a.m. today in a desolate area 42 miles south of Mexicali.

Federal Aviation Agency spokesmen said they have no knowledge if passengers were killed or if they were U.S. citizens. The plane, a Cessna 170, holds four people.

Preliminary and unconfirmed reports to the FAA indicated that the crash was due to “unknown circumstances and that possibly three people were killed.”

According to the FAA spokesman, the plane at one time was registered in the United States, but the agency has no way at the moment of knowing if the plane still was American-owned when it crashed.

40 years ago

In 1908, the new Imperial Hardware Store in Holtville offered the latest in metal frame beds with see-through springs, shiny black cast-iron stoves for the lady of the house, assorted dry goods and groceries to feed hard-working pioneer families. Today, there are 17 Imperial Stores, including seven in Imperial Valley. Through they still offer “hardware,” customers now are more likely to be looking for color televisions, microwave ovens, trash compactors or waterbeds.

Seventy years of service to the Valley is being celebrated by the pioneer merchandise chain this month. The store, founded by Howard P. Meyer and George W. Anderson, in Holtville in 1908 is now the Valley’s oldest continuously operating retail business.

Although Imperial Hardware Co. started out as a “general store,” founders Meyer and Anderson quickly decided they were interested primarily in the hardware business, so they sold all but the hardware lines to Varney Bros., then the leading merchandising firm in the Valley.

With the flooding Colorado River controlled the year before, prospects for the Valley’s development looked bright, so the two young businessmen formed a partnership and increased their stock.

30 years ago

A consultant hired by Imperial County has initially concluded a rural Westmorland toxic dump sits on a site so seismically active that state water regulations would prohibit its expansion, according to a letter obtained by this newspaper.

However, the letter from Moore & Taber, an Anaheim-based engineering firm, also found that the twin November earthquakes’ epicenter near the site did not adversely affect operation of the International Technology Corp. facility.

The letter addressed to county Public Works Director Harry Orfanos surfaced as the state Division of Health Services and the federal Environmental Protection Agency continued considering whether to allow International Technology to expand the facility by opening new landfill pits.

Both International Technology facility manager Danny Shaw and Supervisor Luis Legaspi, one of the facility’s harshest critics, praised portions of the letter.

Said Legaspi, “The conclusion speaks for itself. ... I always thought the site ought to be closed. They picked the wrong site.”

But Shaw, who has yet to see the letter, said he was pleased after hearing the letter’s conclusions read to him. The International Technology site “did withstand the earthquake. That’s the major thing. [Finding whether it did] was the primary purpose of the study.”

20 years ago

She arrived with all guns blazing, a take-no-prisoners attitude and a long-winded speech, and when her hosts tried to express their concerns, she shot them down with deadly accuracy but messy results. After all, she’s an attorney.

And so went the visit from San Diego County Water Authority Chairwoman Christine Frahm on Tuesday before the Imperial County Board of Supervisors, which had summoned her to explain the authority’s secret dealings with Western Farms, in which a scheme was discussed to secretly and retroactively invest in Valley farmland, dry up thousands of acres, ship water to San Diego and take away the Valley’s water rights forever.