Out of the past 1/28/12

25 years ago: Jan. 28, 1987

A group of disgruntled property owners in the Illmo Special Road District say they want to dissolve the district next week in order to have better maintained, all-weather gravel roads; if voters dissolve the 43-year-old district, the Scott County Highway Department will take over responsibility for the maintenance and upkeep of the 35 miles of district roads.

The advisory committee studying a proposed recreational lake in Cape Girardeau County concludes there are serious problems with the site and decides to focus on other locations in the county.

50 years ago: Jan. 28, 1962

Featured speaker at a special evening rally at First Assemblies of God Church is the Rev. Ernest Jones, missionary to Nyasaland, Africa; as a supervisor of missions, Jones has traveled extensively in Nyasaland, Rhodesia and Tanganyika.

CAIRO, Ill. -- Automobile traffic is backed up two and a half miles here; on either side of the road, automobiles are crammed into every parking space; hundreds of people walk the last block and hundreds more line the riverfront to view the boats stalled for more than two weeks by a huge ice jam in the Mississippi River.

75 years ago: Jan. 28, 1937

SIKESTON, Mo. -- With an army camp to accommodate 1,000 flood refugees set up on the golf course near here, victims of the flood are to be moved there tonight; this will relieve the crowded conditions in the schools, so classes can be resumed, at least in some of the schools.

Transfer of approximately 300 refugees to Cape Girardeau from Charleston, Mo., is underway, and more may be sent here within the next 24 hours; an emergency hospital is set up in the basement of First Baptist Church, and an isolation ward is in the Community Clubhouse building at Fairground Park.

100 years ago: Jan. 28, 1912

Officials with the Frisco Railroad are in Cape Girardeau looking over the levee work; they give orders that the work is to be rushed; the wood blocks and other material are on the ground, and the paving of Water Street will be started as soon as the foundation is completed; an extra work train is busy unloading silica along the levee, upon which the stone paving for the levee slope is being placed.

Jessie Whittaker of Memphis, who has been here visiting Mabel Rogers for the past week, leaves for Chaffee, Mo., where she will spend a few days before returning home.

-- Sharon K. Sanders