Reader offers tidbit on origin of Carlton Pool

We are paid to find readers information about what's relevant. Sometimes readers tell us more about topics we have featured that make for an interesting addendum to the story.

So when we received an e-mail Friday on the origin of the Carlton Pool - featured in a story I wrote for Thursday's edition - I was intrigued. I put down my bucket of onion rings from Turkey Rama and tried to find out more.

Our e-mailer, Sharie Asplund Belt of Yamhill, said the pool was built in 1933 through the Works Progress Administration. At the same time, the neighboring city of Yamhill used its government project money to build the high school.

Belt said the pool was where all the Carlton kids who grew up in the '50s and '60s learned to swim and socialize. "We all took a quarter, paid our 15 cents and had 10 cents left over for a treat afterward," she wrote.

I poured through three volumes of McMinnville history - all in the form of musty bound copies of newspapers kept in "The Morgue" at the News-Register. The N-R's predecessors in the 1930s had names like the News-Reporter and Telephone Register.

There's mention of the Carlton park but no mention of the pool. I called city hall and asked for someone who would know and left a message. I spent some time looking for that information because I am here to invest myself in the community.

What better way to spend an hour than reading eight-column broadsheet newspapers from 1933.

My research wasn't all for naught, however. I learned that in 1933, the McMinnville City Council passed an ordinance to legalize beer and wine. This was in the concluding days of prohibition.

In 1933, there also was big news for banks - which were getting help to reopen during the Depression - but no big news for a swimming pool in Carlton.

I'll work on it and let you know.

Lauren L. Dillard

Intern Reporter

503-472-5114, Ext. 229

ldillard@newsregister.com