Mason

A major disruption looms for many Americans.

Daylight saving time will end at 2 a.m. Sunday, Nov. 5, in most states when clocks are turned back an hour. While many Americans will welcome the extra hour of sleep, others will again be dismayed by the earlier afternoon sunsets it will bring.

Still, this annual transition will be much smoother than a time change La Grande residents endured in the spring of 1930 when communities in the United States were free to set their own time. For one week that year La Grande was one of the the only cities in the state to be on daylight saving time.

The stage for this curious chapter was set on May 15, 1930, when the La Grande City Council voted to put the city on daylight saving time beginning May 19.

All clocks in the city that day were to be moved up one hour at 6 a.m. Although few if any other Oregon cities observed daylight saving time, many in the East and Midwest did.

The La Grande council, then known as the city commission, approved the time change after receiving a petition from the local chamber of commerce requesting the switch, according to a May 16, 1930, story in The Observer. The members of the chamber apparently believed that more daylight in the late afternoon and early evening would be good for business.

The ordinance passed by the city commission called for La Grande to remain on daylight saving time through Sept. 7, 1930.

Articles in The Observer prior to the start of the time change indicated many did not anticipate major problems.

The Observer noted that soon people will be able to “quit work at the same time but instead have three and a half hours of daylight at their disposal.”

Another story in the same edition stated: “To the average person living inside the La Grande city limits there will be little confusion, other than adjusting himself to train and bus schedules, radio programs, etc., which must operate on Pacific Standard Time.”

Unfortunately, the feeling of optimism proved to be unwarranted. “As it enters the third day in La Grande, daylight saving time has grown rather than decreased in confusion according to general reports in the city,” a May 21, 1930, story in The Observer reported.

A big reason people were perplexed was that many city residents and businesses remained on standard time while others were observing daylight saving time.

“There is a ton of confusion,” The Observer stated. “Half the town is on, half is off. The month is May, the day is Wednesday, but the hour is your own.”

Four days after daylight saving time took effect, the city commission decided to return La Grande to standard time.

Hands of time were not unified

The La Grande city commission’s vote ended puzzlement in Union County, but there was more time-related confusion and controversy to come decades later in Oregon, according to an article by Curt Deatherage on the “It Happened in Oregon” website.

Deatherage explained that by the early 1960s, the use of daylight saving time in the United States was “haphazard at best and Oregon was no exception” since cities were allowed to decide when they would go on or off daylight savings time.

At one point, five counties in the Portland metropolitan area were on daylight saving time, plus the cities of Eugene, Corvallis and Albany. However, Salem and Springfield remained on standard time.

Deatherage wrote these time differences frustrated officials in the coastal cities of Gearhart, Seaside and Cannon Beach so much that their leaders informed then-Gov. Mark Hatfield that they wanted their towns to secede from Oregon.

Confusion regarding daylight saving time in Oregon ended, Deatherage wrote, in November 1962 when Oregon voters passed an initiative adopting implementation of summer daylight saving time.

Nationally, many issues regarding time were addressed when President Lyndon Johnson signed the Uniform Time Act of 1966. This ended, Deatherage wrote, most of the confusion related to daylight saving and standard time in the United States.