Hi Brendan:
     Halfway, Oregon, is a small mountain ranching community near Hells
Canyon.  I grew up a couple of mountain ranges away from Halfway in
another small, very rural, Eastern Oregon town.  However some of my
family were early settlers in Hells Canyon, not far from Halfway.
Halfway is in a remote location even for Eastern Oregon. I was in the
area this fall looking at the old home place in Hells Canyon but did
not think for a second about driving over to Halfway.
     If you like the isolated, western ranching life, then you might
like Halfway. It is in an un-developed outdoor area with lots of
potential. Like most of the small isolated towns of the region in that
it has been in a slow decline for the last 50 years. It is so small
that it can not support all the normal services offered in a viable
town.
     You are right in that the only way Halfway will get any growth is
through a state or federal boondoggle.  This happened in the 1960's to
Burns, Oregon.  Burns is a much larger, and viable, town in
Southeastern Oregon.  It is also in a remote area of the state.  So the
Feds set up a youth training camp about 30 miles outside of the town.
They then sent mainly black youth from the streets of Chicago, via bus,
across the US to Burns.  There the kids were put on an old school bus
and driven out into the high desert.  The nearest inhabited place,
about 5 miles away, was the headquarters of a wildlife refuge. The only
thing you could see was Steens Mountain and the only thing you could
hear, beside the wind, was the howling of coyotes at night. The camp
had one of the worst burn-out rates for job camps, and it was closed
after a few years.
     Here in Georgia the state helps towns like Halfway by building
'development highways' to the towns. Development highways are four-lane
divided highways that are suppost to draw new business to the towns.
All they do is allow the local to drive faster as they leave the towns.
Have you ever seen four-lane divided highways that have peak rates of
30 cars an hour?

John Sutherland
University of Georgia
Athens, GA   USA
[log in to unmask]



On Fri, 14 Jan 2000 10:20:36 +1100 Brendan Whyte
> ----------------- Message requiring your approval (39 lines) ------------------
> >From today's (Fri 14 Jan 00) Melbourne "Age":
>
> "People of Halfway seek a net gain", dateline Los Angeles
>
> There is no shortage of towns with weird names in the US - Boring, Needy,
> and Truth or Consequences are all registered municipal names. But next
> tuesday, the good people of Halfway, Oregon, will brave 1.2metre-high snow
> drifts to decide whether their town should become the first to be named
> after an internet company.
>       The 345 inhabitants of the little town on the Idaho state border will vote
> on whether the name of their home should be changed fomr Halfway to
> Half.com - and nothing has caused this much of a stir in the town for years.
>       The idea came from a Philadelphia-based Internat company, Half.com, which
> was looking for a publicity gimmick. "We're still negotiating the final
> details," said Kristin Keyes, a spokesman [sic] for Half.com. "But what
> we're talking about is building a website for them, possibly seed money for
> new enterprises and other things."
>       The town's mayor, Dick Crow, said 95 residents wanted to go ahead with the
> change at the last council meeting, with three against. "I hope it creates
> jobs," he said.
>       but not everyone is convinced. Opponents say that the move gives the
> impression that the town is on its last legs and will sell its soul for a
> mess of websites.
>  - Guardian.
>
>
> Can someone in Oregon or Idaho keep an eye on this and report back after
> Tuesday if we need to update all our Oregon maps?
> It reminds me of the town in Japan that changed its name to Usa, so it
> could legitimately print "Made in USA" on all its exports to America... and
> the professional footballer here in Australia who changed his name to that
> of a petfood, admittedly for just one game, as a sponsorship deal!
>
> Perhaps what Halfway really needs is federal funding for a drug rehab
> centre, so that addicts can get out into the Oregon wilds and get clean,
> without city temptations. They could call it the Halfway House...
>
> Brendan Whyte
> University of Melbourne