This is Floyd Wynne with THE VIEW FROM HERE 1/06/05

This is our Centennial year. As a city we are one hundred years old. What have we done with that hundred years?
Well.....let’s go back to 1905 when Klamath Falls officially became a city. Oh...we became Klamath Falls way back in February of 1893, but we were just a town until about 1905.
A newspaper article of the time spells out some of the hopes that the people had around that time. They titled it “What is needed.”
The five items were: l. The arrival of the Oregon Midland Railway. 2. A great irrigation ditch from the upper Klamath Lake, sufficient to irrigate 200,000 acres.
3. Large mills to utilize the great water power at Klamath Falls and especially to cut into lumber the 750,000 acres of sugar pine forests which are adjacent to Klamath Lake and its tributary rivers.
4. A woolen factory to provide for the 1,500,000 pounds of wool which annually goes to distant markets from Lake and Klamath counties.
5. A paper mill to make into paper the inexhaustible supply of fir timber.
Quite an order back then.....but what has been accomplished in the intervening 100 years.
The railroad did arrive four years later in 1909...and then it took another 14 years for it to be completed north to Eugene.
The great irrigating ditch was completed by the federal government at a cost of $5 million dollars....
The large mills came into being, cutting from the 750,000 acres of sugar pine....led initially by the weyerhaeuser Company. As many as 13 mill operations were going at one time in the area.
The woolen factory never arrived....and neither did the paper mill.
But three out of five did come into being.....even though the lumbering in recent years fell victim to the spotted owl.
Now.....here we are at 2005.....what is needed now?
1. We need unification of the city and suburbs into one community.
2. Better civilian air service out of the area...mainly southbound.
3. Adequate funding to promote the areas potential including
tourism.
4. And most important of all.....we need to gain local control over the water of Upper Klamath Lake.
I say “most important” because our future destiny depends on those waters. Today....there are three entities depending on that water.....our farmers.....the Klamath Indians...and the fishermen downstream.
At the moment the Klamath Indians control that water. They have elevated the sucker fish into an endangered specie...demanding the lake water be kept at a certain level for them. That has already resulted in our farmers being denied water one year. After a hundred years of water for the farmers.....the Indians have managed to take control of the lake waters.
In my book....we must demand that the Federal government guarantee our farmers water EVERY year.....if need be the federal government....which inaugurated the canal system...encouraged people to come here...homestead and raise their family farms....must do two things. First.....if necessary....purchase the Indians water rights.
Second....provide the funding and engineering for off stream water storage in the lake to assure future supplies.
This course of action must be absolute top priority for our city and county leaders in this year of 2005. The future of this community depends on action such as I have outlined.
Anything less could prove disastrous to our future.

So....it’s our centennial....a hundred years have gone by....and we must outline our needs for the next hundred.

This is Floyd Wynne and that’s THE VIEW FROM HERE.