This day in history: Most of Keller, Wash., was destroyed by wildfire. Wheat growers angered by decision to stop grain shipments to USSR

From 1975: Washington’s wheat growers were “frustrated and angry” over Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz’s proposal to withhold shipments of grain to the Soviet Union.

One local wheat grower said officials were playing “political ping pong with the grain marketing system.”

Growers were harvesting a record wheat crop – at least twice as much as needed for domestic consumption, they said. Without a robust export market, the excess wheat would be “piled on the ground, unprotected.”

An official of the Washington Association of Wheat Growers singled out Sen. Henry “Scoop” Jackson for criticism. Jackson had recently advocated curtailing exports to the Soviet Union for fear that a “great grain drain” would hurt the U.S. The wheat official said Jackson’s statement was “irrational,” and that Jackson was playing on fears of a nonexistent shortage.

From 1925: Nearly the entire town of Keller on the Colville Reservation was wiped out by an early morning fire.

The fire started in the Iron Clad building “near the center of the village business district,” and spread all the way down the “east side of the town’s only street.”

Gone were the town’s general store, restaurant, meat market and pool hall.

A “volunteer bucket brigade” was called out at 1 a.m., carrying water from the San Poil River. Yet the bucket brigade was no match for the fire, which raged all morning.

Keller, at the time, was famous for its salmon fishing and also for its Salmon Days celebration, which included a rodeo and horse races down the main street.

The original town site was later flooded by the Grand Coulee Dam, causing the town to be moved several times.