50YEARS AGO

from the Democrat-Herald

December 21, 1968

Word has been received that the vacated Air Force radar base has been declared surplus property Dec. 10 by the General Services Administration.

25YEARS AGO

from the Baker City Herald

December 21, 1993

Nadie Strayer, a Baker County native who died in November 1992 at the age of 89, left a $45,000-$50,000 trust hat will provide scholarships for county high school graduates.

Jesse Himmelsbach of Baker City, the attorney for Strayer’s estate, said the estate must be approved in court.

10YEARS AGO

from the Baker City Herald

December 22, 2008

Both city and county road crews spent a busy weekend clearing streets of the weekend’s half a foot of snow, and in some places more, that fell in Baker County.

ONEYEAR AGO

from the Baker City Herald

December 22, 2017

The series of black-and-white photographs that scroll across Gary Dielman’s computer monitor tell the story of a Baker County town that disappeared 59 years ago.

But Robinette is nothing like the county’s many other ghost towns.

You can’t go there and stand where its homes once stood, or glimpse what might have been the corner of a foundation or touch the shard of brick that was part of a chimney.

Because Robinette is underwater.

The place where parents raised their families and where kids ran through the sagebrush and rode their horses and hooked catfish from the Snake River — all of it lies more than 100 feet below the surface of Brownlee Reservoir near the mouth of the Powder River.

Robinette was inundated in 1958 when Idaho Power Company’s Brownlee Dam was finished and the Snake’s water started to back up behind the 420-foot high earthfill structure.