History of Oregon Newspapers/Grant County
GRANT
Canyon City.—The county seat of Grant county always has been a quaint old place with a lot of history, and the home of news papers of picturesque, distinctive quality. Changes of newspaper names and ownerships were frequent in the earlier years.
The first paper published in Grant county was issued in Canyon City in October, 1868, under the name City Journal, R. H. J. Comer editor and publisher. Comer took his equipment in from The Dalles by pack train. The animals probably were not overloaded; the equipment consisted of a job press and enough ad and body type to throw together a tiny paper.
The old City Journal was a three-column folio, 7¾ by 10¼ inches over all, with the then standard 13-em columns. No ambitious promises were made by the publishers as to just when the paper would come out. It was to be "published semi-occasionally by the Typographical Society for the proprietors." It was the fourth issue, June 28, 1869, before R. H. J. Comer announced himself as the printer of the paper, the first printer of Canyon City (105).
The salutatory, a gem of frankness, flashing a dry humor which has not been lost by subsequent Canyon City editors, was en titled "Our Say." It read as follows:
Believing that the time is far distant when the public interests of Grant county will justify the publication of a large-sized paper, the proprietors of the City Journal have, at a small expense, determined to issue a paper whenever they feel so disposed, and we hope our brethren in the same calling will do as they have a mind to.
To the generous public, we will say that it is our intention to have a large circulation, but if they do not wish to read the Journal they can throw it out of their (we hope) peaceful homes; and our terms are such that all can have it in their libraries for future reference.
The latest news our readers will, in all probability find in the Mountaineer, Oregonian, Herald, N. Y. Tribune, La Crosse Democrat, or any other paper they are in the habit of picking up and reading.
Local news being of such a nature that everybody, or any other man, knows every other person's business, except their own, we shall publish only such as suits our purpose.
Communications of the long-winded kind will, perhaps, appear in our columns.
Hoping that all our friends will take a lively interest in their own affairs, we conclude our say.
"This establishment," the City Journal told its readers in an advertisement, "is not prepared to print any books or posters, but can do small job printing if the Devil can be found at home."
In the early seventies the name was changed to the Canyon City Express and later to the Grant County Express (106). H. R. Gale, formerly of Roseburg, became editor in 1876, about the time the name was changed to the Grant County Times. In 1879 a new owner, S. H. Shepherd, changed the name to the Grant County News, an independent paper issued on Saturdays. The next editors, who carried the paper, successively, until D. I. Asbury, later of McMinnville, purchased it in 1886, were H. J. Neal, W. C. McFadden and J. T. Donnelly, who gave Asbury a bill of sale July 27, 1886.
Mr. Asbury carried the paper along until 1898, when he sold to P. F. Chandler and Robert Glen. After five years Mr. Glen sold his interest to C. J. Mcintosh, who remained five years. He later became professor of industrial editing at the Oregon State Agricultural College. Five years later, in 1908, Clinton P. Haight, a few years out of the law school of the University of Oregon, purchased the Mcintosh half, and the firm of Chandler & Haight was formed. In the same year the new firm purchased the Blue Mountain Eagle, which had been moved from Long Creek to Canyon City eight years before and which had been published by Patterson & Ward. The papers were consolidated under the name Blue Mountain Eagle, which has continued down to the present. Through the old News end of the consolidation, however, the Eagle traces its ancestry clear back to the beginnings of the little old City Journal of early statehood days.
Joaquin Miller, former Eugene newspaper man and later county judge of Grant county, known to world-wide fame as the "poet of the Sierras," was a frequent contributor to the Canyon City paper in the sixties and seventies.
William (Bud) Thompson, lifelong friend, who had worked for him in Eugene on the Eugene City Herald-Register-Review (titles changed frequently in those days of federal suppressions in the early 60's), speaks highly, in his book of reminiscences of Miller's courage and of his honesty and independence.
Chandler & Haight have a few copies of the county's first paper and of the Grant County Express. Complete files of these publications were destroyed by fire.
The old Long Creek Eagle, which in time gave its name to one of the most picturesque of Oregon country papers, was founded by C. E. Dustin and Peter Connolly in November 1886. Though the official population of the town (Long Creek) was 150 or so, they carried on until September 1889, when they sold to John H. Kahn, who two years later sold to Orin L. Patterson. In 1898, the same year when Mr. Chandler bought the News, the name of the Long Creek paper was changed to Blue Mountain Eagle.
Clinton P. Haight, present editor of the Eagle, and co-publisher with P. F. Chandler, is known as one of the leading authorities on the coyote, which he seriously regards as the cagiest and perhaps the most intelligent of animals. He was elected to the legislature in 1934 and made a name for satirically humorous speeches.
When the Eagle flew over to Canyon City, the Long Creek Ranger was placed in the journalistic saddle by Charles A. Coe, in 1900, as a Friday independent Republican weekly. In 1908 Weir & Allen (W. E. Weir and J. H. Allen) purchased the paper and were still conducting the paper when it was finally suspended in 1930. Through most of the 1920's, the Ranger was edited and published by Grace Porter (Mrs. Tanler).
One other paper, perhaps, needs a brief mention. Keeler H. Gabbert, formerly of Josephine county and later of St. Helens, whose urge to start papers exceeded his strength to keep them going, launched a paper called the Avalanche-Journal in 1896. It was described in Ayer's for 1897 as "Republican. Eight pages. 11×16. $1.50." It soon faded out.
Prairie City.—The Grant County Journal is the old Prairie City Miner under a change of name dating back to 1912. The Miner was established by W. W. Watson and edited, successively, by A. M. F. Kircheiner, C. P. Haight, William E. Weir, and Albert G. Owen.
Editors and publishers of the Journal since 1913 have been, successively, Jesse H. Allen and Philip F. A. Boche, Don Jolley, George H. Flagg, C. S. Rice and F. E. Donaldson, W. Glenn, and Lester A. Wolf.
Notes
[edit]composing-room, used it as a recommendation and landed a new job from a man who, reading it, couldn't see that it was anything else. There was the more obviously apocryphal yarn of the two printers who inked the feet and spurs of two roosters and set them to fighting in the back shop on some big sheets of newsprint. Greeley's favorite typo set the resulting "copy" with no particular trouble until he came to one long, wavy scratch made by one of the spurs. This had to be referred to Greeley, who immediately deciphered it as "unconstitutional."
76. He lost the money in the salmon-canning business in British Columbia and from then on stuck closer to journalism.
77. The firm later established the Mining Journal at San Francisco and ran it with great success.
78. August, 1923.
79. Letter from company dated September 26, 1936.
80. Article by Ralph D. Casey, then professor of journalism in the University of Oregon, Oregon Exchanges, February, 1923, page 3.
81. Powers, History of Oregon Literature, 292.
82. ibid.
83. For this story by Claire Dunbar Roberts, see Matrix, national organ of Theta Sigma Phi, for April, 1934.
84. His Pendleton career is covered in the Pendleton part of this history.
85. Oregon Exchanges, May, 1924, page 7.
86. F. T. Gilbert, Historic Sketches, 367.
87. F. B. Ludington, op. cit., 261.
88. Gilbert, op. cit., 367.
89. Parsons, History of Umatilla County, 284.
90. Personal interview, August 10, 1938.
91. Parsons, op. cit., 205.
92. Parsons, op. cit., 205. Interview by Sam Raddon, Jr., Oregon Journal.
94. Personal interview, August 10, 1938.
95. F. T. Gilbert, Historic Sketches of Walla Walla, Whitman, Columbia, and Garfield Counties and Umatilla County, Oregon, p. 368.
96. Letter to Colin V. Dyment, September 3, 1921.
97. ibid.
98. According to Ayer's Directory.
99. As told by E. P. Dodd, former publisher of the Pendleton Morning Tribune, in the Herald's anniversary number, September 17, 1936.
100. News-Reporter, March, 1938.
101. The Telephone.
102. The Reporter and the Courier.
103. Formerly of the Reporter.
104. Columbia University, master's thesis by Irl S. McSherry, 1925.
105. Douglas C. McMurtrie in the Typo Student, Seattle, April, 1935.
106. Information in this paragraph obtained in part in personal letter from P. F. Chandler, of Chandler & Haight, Blue Mountain Eagle.
107. George A. Scibird, History of Newspapers of Union Oregon, from 1870 to 1933, unpublished.
108. On page 347 of this volume.
109. Data from George A. Scibird, op. cit.
110. Elgin Recorder, Feb. 28, 1935.
111. George Huntington Currey has in his library old files and records covering, in thorough fashion, the newspaper history of La Grande and, to a certain extent, of the rest of Union county. From these files and from personal conferences with