 February 28, 1920 Last week the Reedsport Main Street Program reached a small milestone – we now have over 300 followers on our young Facebook page! It has been a joy to see each of you like the page one by one. About half of our online community lives in Reedsport, while the other half hails from all over the country and even the world. I try to keep the page interesting with photos of the area, current events, posts to inspire, and all-around appreciation for the beautiful place where we live. What else would you like to see? To each of our followers, thank you. And if you haven’t visited the page yet, did you know that you can view it like a regular website? (No Facebook account required!) Check it out at:
https://www.facebook.com/reedsportmainstreet/ A big thank you to the volunteers who came last Saturday to our community cleanup day! We washed the interpretive signs on the Umpqua River boardwalk and painted bicycles all over the trash can for the new Reedsport Cycle Stop. Our toughest projects were weeding the area around where the old A-frame building used to be (one of the first places people see when they arrive from the north) and weeding the area around the old Midas gas station, including reclaiming part of the sidewalk from overgrown plants. We are so grateful to live in a place where you can hear the plants growing, but we do have to keep our pruning shears always at the ready, especially for aggressive non-natives like holly, ivy, and Himalayan blackberry. (You should never feel bad about hacking these away immediately.) Take a look at the work that our wonderful volunteers did to help clean up our town. What would it take to get you to join us next time? A different day? A different project? Let me know so we can include you in our next volunteer day. There’s still a lot of good work to do! Speaking of doing good work, this week we’re saying a sad “Goodbye and Happy Retirement” to Vera Koch, Reedsport’s longtime Finance Director. Vera has been responsible for maintaining the budget for the RMSP as well. I can’t count the number of times she’s helped me sort through difficult financial snarls. Reedsport could not ask for a friendlier, more honest, harder working person to be responsible for our finances. (I get to see this firsthand every day by working here in City Hall.) If you want to thank Vera in person for her service to our community, please come to the Open House tomorrow, June 30th, from 3pm to 5pm in Reedsport City Hall. You may have notice some new items in Reedsport’s history archive, including the Reedsport City Council minutes from 1919 to 1959. The minutes through the 1980s will be uploaded soon. Did you know that these are searchable? You can search them a variety of ways, but the best is to open the PDF for each decade, then type CTRL-F to bring up a search bar. (The text beneath the PDF image is only a computer-generated scan of the PDF, so it has lots of typos!) Read them all here: http://reedsport100.omeka.net/ We are also working with the University of Oregon to scan and upload the entire Port Umpqua Courier from 1914 to 2002. If we can raise the funds, this entire newspaper will be free and searchable online just like the City Council minutes. Right now our historic hometown newspaper is available only on microfilm, and that microfilm is only held in Eugene and Portland…not exactly easy to access. The paper is split across forty reels, and each reel will cost $50 to scan. Would you like to sponsor a reel and put several years of the Courier online for everyone to enjoy? Please contact me! Here are our upcoming dates: June 30 – Open House for Vera Koch, 3-5pm at Reedsport City Hall July 12 – Promotion Committee, 5pm at the Waterfront Restaurant July 13 – Economic Development Committee, 5pm at Reedsport City Hall July 19 – RMSP Board of Directors, 5pm at Reedsport City Hall The theme of this update seems to be milestones and history, so I’ll finish up with a question about a historic milestone. In 2019, Reedsport will turn 100. (Reedsport was founded in 1911/12, but incorporated in 1919.) Here is your assignment. What do you think Reedsport should do to celebrate its centennial year? A centennial celebration…we only get to have it once. Let your imagination run wild and send in your ideas! Katie Lockard Reedsport Main Street Program Coordinator Comments are closed.
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