STORIES FROM THE PAST
50 years ago
HOLTVILLE — The Holtville Vikings have the final hurdle to clear Friday night as the Vikings host Needles in the California Interscholastic Federation, Southern Section, Small Schools championship game.
It is the first trip to the finals for Holtville since the championship year of 1961 when the Vikings topped Bishop, 13-7, for the Small School championship. That year, the Vikings were 11-1-0.
That was also the season the Vikings set a Valley scoring record with 317 points. Holtville has taken care of that mark by scoring 422 in building an 11-0-0 record this season.
The Vikings meet Needles at 8 p.m. Needles is an old hand at championship games. Needles won the Small Schools title in 1962 and 1965 and finished second in 1966. The only team to defeat Needles (10-1) this season was Class A semifinalist Apply Valley.
40 years ago
Another hole in El Centro’s civic center area will apparently be filled by spring 1980, but a new hole will apparently be created in the downtown area.
Continental Services, the real estate branch of the Bank of America Corp., has purchased an 84,000-square-foot lot near the old Webers Bread Bakery on Main Street and will reportedly construct a bank building there. According to Chuck Lindwall of Continental Services, the proposed bank building will take up 15,500 square feet.
Dan Mueller, El Centro Bank of America branch manager, said construction of the building will probably begin in mid1979 and Lindwall said the building may be open to the public around August 1980.
Lindwall said the architectural plans have not yet been completed and are now in the “preliminary layout” stages.
Escrow on the property closed Thursday, according to Wallace Tow, the real estate broker who handled the deal locally.
30 years ago
A convoy of trucks looking more like the tank cars of a gigantic train, rolled down Highway 115 toward Holtville recently.
Actually it was a shipment of six huge water vessels being carried by flatbed trucks to the East Mesa Geothermal Project east of Holtville. Each vessel weighed 30 tons or more and stood 18 feet above the highway.
The massive cargo was nearing the end of a journey that began in Japan where the vessels were manufactured. Ships carried the freight to Long Beach Harbor where each vessel was loaded onto individual trucks for the trip to the East Mesa plant.
At the plant, the vessels were lifted off the trucks by crane and into position near geothermal wells at the plant. Once in operation, the vessels will be used to hold heated water and produce steam.
Steam will be used to turn turbines for the production of 37 megawatts of electricity. Electricity will be sold to Southern California Edison Co. through existing power lines.
The process is nothing new for Geothermal Resources International Inc., the developers of the East Mesa Geothermal Project. The company has operated a geothermal plant throughout the ‘80s in an energy-productive area known as “The Geysers” in Northern California.
But the East Mesa plant is a big step forward for the company in developing geothermal resources here. Plant officials are excited about the opportunities in Imperial County.
20 years ago
How much water will the Imperial Irrigation District draw from the Colorado River in 1999?
A discussion on that question will start at 10 a.m. Tuesday in the IID auditorium in El Centro. Present will be representatives of the IID and of the Bureau of Reclamation, which controls the river. The public is invited.
It’s a public meeting by IID request, said Robert Walsh, BOR external affairs officer.
“Apparently the district wanted the local folks in the area to hear what the bureau’s concerns were and what our take was on their water use and water orders,” he said Wednesday.