By Jayson Jacoby

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The first in a series of five large timber sales planned on the Wallowa-Whitman National Forest in eastern Baker County is slated to be offered to mills this summer.

A local environmental group, meanwhile, is considering whether to go to court to challenge the Snow Basin project, which is also designed to reduce the risk of wildfires on 28,500 acres in the southern Wallowa Mountains.

“We are looking at our options,” said David Mildrexler, ecosystem conservation coordinator for the Hells Canyon Preservation Council (HCPC) in La Grande.

By Jayson Jacoby

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Firefighters who doused a lightning-sparked blaze in southern Baker County this week were given a hand, as it were, by a blaze that happened more than 20 years ago.

The Glasgow fire, near the Dooley Mountain Highway about 15 air miles south of Baker City, burned 35 acres on Monday. It was ignited about 8 a.m. Monday.

Crews starting mopping up the fire on Tuesday.

By Terri Harber

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Baker City councilors on Tuesday didn’t accept an appeal challenging a Planning Commission decision allowing a business to operate in a residential area.

The seven-member planning commission approved a conditional-use permit on May 23 allowing attorneys Robert Moon and Kyra Rohner-Ingram to run their law practice from a house in the 2600 block of Main Street. 

Matt Shirtcliff lives near the attorneys’ business site. 

Shirtcliff, who is the Baker County district attorney, believes the commissioners’ decision was based on faulty information and that he has a right to appeal.

Shirtcliff lives about 260 feet away from the Main Street property. People living within 100 feet of a site that might be modified must receive written notification before the Planning Commission considers a conditional-use permit request.

There also were signs posted outside the law office location — a new requirement for such matters within the city’s borders — but Shirtcliff said he didn’t pay much attention to them.

A fire official was requesting help from air tankers and bulldozers early this afternoon to slow a wildfire burning near the Dooley Mountain Highway about 15 air miles south of Baker City.

The blaze, estimated at 12 to 15 acres, is on the Burnt River side of the Dooley Mountain summit.

It is burning on the ridge that divides Glasgow Gulch and Mill Creek, in an area scorched by the Cornet fire in the 1980s. The blaze is about two miles northeast of the junction of the Dooley Mountain Highway and the Bridgeport Road.

Fire officials had not confirmed the cause of the fire as of 1 p.m. today. There were thunderstorms with lightning in the area Sunday and early Monday.

By Jayson Jacoby

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July is scarcely a week old but it already has surpassed its immediate predecessor, thermally speaking.

The temperature reached at least 90 degrees on four of the first eight days this month.

July 2011 was comparatively tepid, with just two 90-degree days the whole of the month.

By Devan Schwartz

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Fire season is in effect on lands protected by the Oregon Department of Forestry’s Northeast Oregon District.

That includes state and many private lands in the region.

A press release issued Friday said that the above average snowpack and below average temperatures which delayed the fire season should give way to warmer and drier conditions.

Of particular concern to fire managers are low elevation areas whose grass and brush are rapidly drying out.

The declaration applies to “private, state, county, municipal, and tribal lands in Union, Baker, Wallowa, and Umatilla counties, along with small portions of Malheur, Morrow, and Grant Counties within the Northeast Oregon Forest Protection District.”

The district comprises more than 1.8 million acres.

By Terri Harber

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The Baker City Bank of America branch will close its doors in mid-October.

“These are difficult decisions to make, and we do not take them lightly,” said Britney Sheehan, a spokeswoman for the corporation. “In this case, the banking center did not generate enough foot traffic to justify its presence.” 

By Lisa Britton

For the Baker City Herald

Tyler Schlipf wants to pursue a career in film,  so he had a ready answer when a CBS news crew requested a guide this weekend.

“I said certainly,” says Schlipf, who will be a senior this year at Baker High School.

CBS is coming to film the adventures of the Rand McNally Best of the Road team, which arrives Saturday.

By Jayson Jacoby

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The boy wanted a friend.

It would perhaps not even be overstating things to say that this boy, at this moment, needed a friend.

And it was then that he met the dog.

This boy and this dog were best friends for the next 15 years.

When you hear the story of how their friendship came to be you could maybe believe that it was fate, or else something so close as to not matter.

By Devan Schwartz

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The Bull Ridge Brewpub has become the second local brewery in Baker City.

The business opened last Labor Day at 1934 Broadway St. with a full menu and a lengthy list of others’ brews.

But paperwork and logistical snags sapped Bull Ridge’s momentum for producing its own beers.

Now that’s a distant memory, and co-owner Julie Blank will drink to that.

In search of a brewmaster, she put an ad on the website, Careersinbeer.com. 

Responses poured in, but Walter Bourque most impressed Blank with his degree in microbiology from Texas A&M and obvious networking skills.

Bourque had never been to Oregon before he drove from Texas.

He skulks between the main floor and the basement, where brewing equipment lives like something out of a mad scientist movie.