LOCAL & NATION
6A — BAKER CITY HERALD
FRIDAY, JULY 22, 2016
REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION CONCLUDES IN CLEVELAND
Olivier Douliery/Abaca Press-TNS
Republican candidate DonaldTrump with his wife, MelaniaTrump at the Republican National Convention.
S. John Collins / Baker City Herald
Levers in the control room were manipulated by one man to operate the excavation process.
DREDGE Continued from Page 1A
“People really want to come up,” Brown said. “Every day.” Today, the stairway to reach the top floor is blocked by locked doors. Brown said she still occasionally finds people climbing over and sneaking upstairs. She is limited in her tours to the downstairs area. Board members with Friends of the Dredge are looking to change that. Board member Jack Walls joined Brown on a rare top deck tour on Tuesday. He joined Friends of the Dredge four months ago and attends monthly meetings. He sees the value of the investment because of the historical significance of the dredge. “Why save anything?” Walls said. “It’s a place to get an appreciation. Where would we be today if we didn’t have our history?” Brown has a slightly different perspective. Beyond present day, she sees the dredge as a lesson for the future. The tour is an opportunity to show people the pros and cons of dredging, she said. Before the 1,260-ton structure was built, the area was a grassland used to grow crops and graze animals. The dredge churned the valley into a series of gravel piles and ponds. “History helps you to see, so that you can make a good determination,” Brown said. “Do I to tear up the land to get the gold — is it worth it? Or is the land more valuable?” She feels her tours can be more informative if the top floor is opened. Before it can, restoration must start from the bottom up. The first priority is addressing uneven support structures at the dredge’s foundation, Walls said. Since the park bought the dredge in 1992, the hull’s wooden support beams have slowly rotted away. “They look like a beaver has been down there and chewing on them,” Walls said. He speculates that the 18 inches of
S. John Collins / Baker City Herald
The top of a huge gear wheel, foreground, rises above the control room, background.
“People really want to come up. Every day.” — Rella Brown, ranger assistant at the Sumpter Dredge State Park
water filling the hull likely contributed to the wood decay. The park has hired an historical architect to examine the state of the foundation. The visit is planned for early August. Walls is confident that before anything else is done, the water in the hull must be drained or pumped out. After that, he wants workers to replace the wooden beams with concrete, though no plans are definitive. Park Manager Dennis Bradley is unsure what the cost of the project would be without a structural assessment. Whatever the case, Friends of the Dredge is constantly on the hunt for grants from private organizations. Some of the previous donors include U.S. Bank, M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust and the Leo Adler Foundation. Workers recently restored the rotten beams on the dredge’s roof using over
$77,000 in grants. That’s relatively cheap compared to previous projects. The hull’s foundation is a different story. Though future projects don’t have an estimated cost attached to them yet, Walls estimates the hull work could cost over a million dollars. That figure is consistent with previous amounts spent on major restorations. In 2014, rotting wood on the dredge’s outside walls was replaced and painted an authentic white. That cost $647,000. Brown said it costs more to maintain historical authenticity. “A two-by-four is called a two-by-four because it used to be 2 by 4 inches in 1934,” Brown said, “All of the wood has to be the original specs.” After the hull repairs are complete, work can begin on the upstairs area. Though some of the original boards have been replaced, the floor is still filled with wobbly planks, some of them rotted, and there’s no way of preventing someone from falling off the side to the bottom floor. The latter is a significant safety issue, Brown said. She leads large groups on tours and worries about children wandering off and putting themselves in danger. Friends of the Dredge hasn’t figured out exactly how to address safe measures upstairs, but Brown says some kind of barriers will have to be put up to prevent accidents. Despite some uncertainty, Brown isn’t worried. After 10 years of working at the park, she is confident that the top deck will be open to the public some day. “I don’t think it’ll happen before I retire, but I don’t care,” Brown said. “I only got a couple years until I’m 65 so I’m done.” Even so, she hopes to return to the dredge as a part-time volunteer when the day comes. Until then, she reminds visitors to stay off the steps leading the coveted deck above. For more information about the Sumpter Valley Dredge, visit oregonstateparks.org.
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Trump: ‘Safety will be restored’ By Julie Pace and Robert Furlow Associated Press
CLEVELAND — Declaring America in crisis, Donald Trump pledged to cheering Republicans and still-skeptical voters Thursday night that as president he will restore the safety they fear they’re losing, strictly curb immigration and save the nation from Hillary Clinton’s record of “death, destruction, terrorism and weakness.” Confidently addressing the finale of his party’s lessthan-smooth national convention, the billionaire businessman declared the nation’s problems too staggering to be fixed within the confines of traditional politics. “I have joined the political arena so that the powerful can no longer beat up on people that cannot defend themselves,” Trump said. The 70-year-old celeb“I have joined the political rity businessman’s acceptance of the Repubarena so that the powerful lican nomination caps can no longer beat up on his improbable takeover of the GOP, a party that people that cannot defend plunges into the general themselves.” election united in oppo— Donald Trump sition to Clinton but still divided over Trump. Underscoring his unorthodox candidacy, Trump doubled down on the hard-line immigration policies that fired up conservatives in the primary but broke with many in his party by promising protections for gays and lesbians. His address on the closing night of the convention marked his highest-profile opportunity yet to heal Republican divisions and show voters he’s prepared for the presidency. Ever the showman, he fed off the energy of the crowd, stepping back to soak in applause and joining the delegates as they chanted, “U-S-A.” As the crowd, fiercely opposed to Clinton, broke out in its oft-used refrain of “Lock her up,” he waved them off, and instead declared, “Let’s defeat her in November.” Yet he also accused her of “terrible, terrible crimes” and said her greatest achievement may have been avoiding prison for her use of a private email and personal server as secretary of state. The more than hour-long speech was strikingly dark for a celebratory event and almost entirely lacking in specific policy details. Trump shouted throughout as he read off a teleprompter, showing few flashes of humor or even a smile. He accused Clinton, his far-more-experienced Democratic rival, of utterly lacking the good judgment to serve in the White House and as the military’s commander in chief. “This is the legacy of Hillary Clinton: death, destruction, terrorism and weakness,” he said. “But Hillary Clinton’s legacy does not have to be America’s legacy.” In a direct appeal to Americans shaken by a summer of violence at home and around the world, Trump promised that if he takes office in January, “safety will be restored.” As he moves into the general election campaign, he’s sticking to the controversial proposals of his primary campaign, including building a wall along the entire U.S.-Mexico border and suspending immigration from nations “compromised by terrorism.” But in a nod to a broader swath of Americans, he said young people in predominantly black cities “have as much of a right to live out their dreams as any other child in America.” He also vowed to protect gays and lesbians from violence and oppression, a pledge that was greeted with applause from the crowd. “As a Republican, it is so nice to hear you cheerLTRYM ing for what I just said,” he HEATER responded. Trump was introduced by his daughter Ivanka, who announced a childcare policy proposal that the PG-13 The crew explores the furthest reaches of uncharted space, where they campaign had not menencounter a new enemy tioned before. FRI - THURS: (4:00) 7:00, 9:35 “As president, my father ICE AGE: COLLISION will change the labor laws COURSE PG that were put in place at a Manny, Diego, and Sid join up with Buck to fend off a meteor strike that would destroy the world time when women weren’t FRI - THURS: (4:20) 7:20, 9:45 significant portion of the GHOSTBUSTERS PG-13 aworkplace, and he will focus Comedy reboot with a new cast, including: Kristin Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon & Chris Hemsworth on making quality childcare FRI - THURS: (4:10) 7:10, 9:40 affordable and accessible for *No Tightwad Tuesday ( )Bargain Matinee 1809 First • 541-523-2522 • eltrym.com all,” she said.
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