History of Oregon Newspapers/Klamath County
KLAMATH
Klamath Falls.—Back in the days when Klamath Falls was still known as Linkville, the first newspaper in Klamath county was born. This was in 1884, nearly forty years after the establishment of Oregon's first newspaper at Oregon City, thirty years after the old Scottsburg Gazette gave southern Oregon its first newspaper, eight years after the start of journalism in Ashland, and six years behind the start of Lakeview journalism.
The first Klamath paper was the Linkville Star, founded by Bowdoin & Curtis. Joseph A. Bowdoin, the only member of the firm who ever came to Klamath, got his first issue off the press May 10, 1884. The plant, previously used in the publication of the weekly Post at Etna, Siskiyou county, California, was freighted over the hills to its new home, for railroad transportation was still far away.
At the end of the first year the partnership was dissolved, and Mr. Bowdoin continued the paper until July, 1889, when his son, W. E. Bowdoin, took charge. (155) The elder Bowdoin died February 14, 1904. The son had no sooner taken charge of the struggling little paper than the little plant was wiped out by fire (September, 1889). After a short interruption waiting for a new plant from the "outside," W. E. Bowdoin resumed publication. A memorable member of the old Star family was Peter J. Connolly, to whom his employer sold an interest in the business in September, 1890, after "Peter the Poet" had acted as Bowdoin's editor for a year. Connolly was not only clever in rhyme and rhythm but could make wood-cut illustrations, which came in handy in those days before the halftone had come into general newspaper use. The elder Bowdoin, though a Democrat, had steered an independent political course in the Star. The new partnership, however, made the paper a Republican partisan.
At the end of four years of harmonious partnership Connolly bought out the Bowdoin interest, September 18, 1894, and turned the paper into a People's Party (Populist) organ. In January, 1895, J. K. Haynes purchased a minority interest. These were hard days for the little paper, which Connolly had rechristened the Klamath Star; it was the heart of a depression, and first Connolly and then Haynes were forced to give up. The Star gave its last twinkle, October 31, 1895. The equipment was used for a time to print Don Carlos Boyd's short-lived Independent.
The Star contributed to local history by printing, April 10, 1891, the first suggestion that the name Klamath Falls be substituted for Linkville. The suggestion was made by Isa Leskeard.
In competition with the old Star for several years was Klamath Falls' second paper, the Express, founded by David B. Worthington who years after leaving Oregon became a successful and wealthy newspaper publisher in Beloit, Wis.
Worthington launched the weekly Klamath Falls Express April 28, 1892, and conducted it for three years, finally selling in June, 1895, to Joseph G. Pierce and George J. Farnsworth.
Worthington, a graduate of the University of Wisconsin, had already founded the South Dakota Tribune before coming west. He was brought out to California by M. H. DeYoung, founder of the San Francisco Chronicle, who had met him in Chicago where Worthington was doing a bit of work for the Milwaukee Journal. This was in 1887. He did night police for the Chronicle in those highly colorful San Francisco days, then went north to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. From Seattle he came to Klamath as a handsome young man of 28 to found the Express. Two years later he was a delegate to the state Democratic convention. His journalistic monument in Klamath was an illustrated souvenir edition of the Express, a splendid job, which, circulated all over the United States, very likely did a lot to bring settlers west to the Klamath country just about the time he was making up his mind to return east.
Farnsworth and Pierce ran into heavy weather immediately, and in December, 1895, their plant was attached by creditors. Pierce, however, was able to get back the paper in January, 1896, and promptly turned the Express into a free silver-fusion organ. He was succeeded October 27, 1902, by Roy Hamaker, who made the Express independent in politics.
J. Scott Taylor, taking his first plunge into journalistic waters, bought the Express in May, 1904, and made the paper Democratic again. Mr. Taylor conducted the Express until 1911, when, late in the summer, he sold it to A. C. Wrenn, backed by the Klamath Development Company. Taylor made the paper a daily, Klamath's first, in 1907, calling it the Morning Express. For this he needed a news service. He therefore arranged with an Ashland man to buy the Portland Evening Telegram daily off the Southern Pacific train, and telephone him the high points in the day's news. For transmission purposes the editor leased the telephone line from Ashland to Klamath Falls from 9 to 10 o'clock each night; this Mr. Taylor half-proudly, half-humorously, with the Hearst phrase of the day in mind, styled "the shortest leased wire in the world." (156) The Telegram would not have reached Klamath until the next day.
The story goes that Taylor was regarded as "good competition" by the Evening Herald, which, directed by W. O. Smith, did a lot of composition for Taylor, whose plant was inadequate. No great effort was made to collect for this, on the theory that should any thing happen to the Taylor regime, the next one might be stiffer.
Rumblings of the "courthouse fight" of later years were heard during Taylor's editorship. He reminded those agitating for a new site that contrary to their contention no money could be obtained from the sale of the old site to help build the new courthouse since under the terms of donation the site would revert to the previous owners if not used for courthouse purposes. Taylor was a Prohibitionist in days when Oregon was wet, and he strove for local option in Klamath.
When A. C. Wrenn, backed by the Klamath Development Company, took over the paper, he threw out the name and called his purchase the Pioneer Press.
Making a trip to San Francisco, Wrenn obtained an adequate mechanical equipment and proceeded to reverse every policy of his predecessor. He substituted International News Service and other wire service for the "shortest-leased" grapevine. Taylor had been dry; the Pioneer Press advocated liquor licenses. Taylor had favored keeping the courthouse where it was; Wrenn pushed the claims of the Hot Springs location. He raised the size of the paper from four to eight pages.
Among the editors of the Republican was Capt. Oliver Cromwell Applegate, who had been for a time editor of the Ashland Tidings, in the 70's, when the Tidings was the big paper of southern Oregon, circulating freely in the Klamath country. Captain Applegate directed the Republican during one of its hot political fights. One of his big stories as a newspaper man was his account of the hanging of Captain Jack and his associates at Fort Klamath in 1873 for the Canby massacre in the Modoc war. His story was sent to the Oregonian, the Pittsburgh Leader and the New York Times.
The city now (1911) had three daily papers—the Herald, the Chronicle (started in 1910) and the Pioneer Press.
The Herald had been started in 1906 by the Cronemiller family, later of Lakeview. In 1903 Wesley O. Smith, who had come to Klamath Falls as a timberman, had bought the Republican, a weekly established April 23, 1896, by W. E. Bowdoin, formerly of the old Linkville Star. Bowdoin was in the commercial printing business and had some of the old equipment of the Star, which he used to print the new paper. In July, 1898, Milan A. Loosley, who had been a partner for a year, purchased Bowdoin's interest. He sold soon after ward to the Klamath Republican Publishing Company, under the management of Charles L. Roberts. The Republican, conservative in policies, appealed to the business element and was well patronized in competition with J. Scott Taylor's Express.
The next change in the Republican brought W. Huse & Sons across the mountains from Ashland to conduct the paper. They carried on for four years, selling to Wesley O. Smith April 23, 1903. They announced simply and frankly in that issue of their paper that "He offered us our price and we accepted."
Smith issued his first paper April 30, 1903. Not a newspaper man, he had been persuaded by J. Wesley Hamaker, an attorney, seeking election to the senate, to take over the Republican with Hamaker's backing and support him for the office. Smith and Ha maker both were Republicans. When Hamaker was defeated, he lost interest in journalism and sold the paper to Smith, who proceeded to make a rousing go of it, distancing the older Express in the circulation race, 367 to 321 by sworn count, in 1905.
March 1, 1906, E. J. Murray was brought in from Portland to be editor of the Republican for Smith, beginning a career which was to last through all the stormy period of Klamath history.
Meanwhile the Fred Cronemillers were getting out a good little paper in the Evening Herald, which they started in July, 1906. It was only a five-column folio but covered the town very well, with Fred Cronemiller getting the news and advertising, Mrs. Cronemiller setting all the type by hand herself, and the three children delivering the paper, and helping out wherever they could.
Smith and Murray together purchased the Herald early in 1908. They raised it from tabloid to standard size in February, installed Klamath's first linotype in July. Murray cooperated with Smith in the management of both the daily Herald and the weekly Republican until 1911, when he left to purchase the Chronicle, a daily started the year before in the interest of the older section of the town. The Herald was promoting the Klamath Development Company's plain to shift the courthouse from the old location in the west end near the original Linkville. Taylor's Express was not very active in the fight, and there were rumors that the development company was soon to get the paper. In desperation the west-end people launched a daily paper, the Chronicle, Monday, April 4, 1910. The Chronicle made no secret of its aims and plunged at once into the thick of the court house fight. Within a year, however, the same A. C. Wrenn who the next year turned the Express into a K. D. backer, had become editor of the Chronicle and changed its policies. Murray purchased the Chronicle October 10, 1911, and sold out in the following February.
That February of 1912 is a memorable time in Klamath Falls journalism, for it marked the advent of Sam Evans' famous Northwestern. There were three dailies in the town of 6,000 when Evans arrived with $25,000 to $50,000 of his own and an indeterminate amount of backing that looked rather formidable. The dailies were A. C. Wrenn's morning Pioneer Press (the old Express), E. J. Murray's Evening Chronicle, and W. O. Smith's Evening Herald.
Launching a policy that soon had not only Klamath Falls but all of western journalism gasping in astonishment, Evans bought the Pioneer Press and the Chronicle, suspended them, and started the Klamath Falls Northwestern, a morning daily. It was a journalistic rocket, which in three years was lying burned out by the wayside, its owner missing from the scene.
Evans was an attractive young man in his late twenties when he came to Klamath Falls. The son of a Stockton (Calif.) physician, he preferred writing to practicing medicine and became capable with his pen. Sunset Magazine, promoting interest in the Klamath country in behalf of the Southern Pacific, sent Evans there to write a series of articles on that interesting region. Evans remained and got his journalistic vision.
His building, planned by newspaper experts, was such an architectural triumph for newspaper purposes that 24 years later the Evening Herald moved in and occupied it, in the summer of 1936. It was hailed as the best thing of the kind between Sacramento and Portland. The total investment was estimated at close to $300,000. Evans was in supreme control.
The paper was sensational in makeup and content, forcing the more conservative Evening Herald for a time out of its quiet and dignity. It was a seven-column, four-page paper, with six pages on big advertising days and even eight on occasion. To print this paper Evans installed four linotypes and a perfecting press, requiring stereotyped plates. The circulation, claimed at 1400, never really exceeded half that figure.
The whole period of the Evans regime was marked by sensational warfare with the Herald and the police department, and frenzied news and editorials in general. The Herald sometimes would meet Evans head-on; at other times it would be whimsically sarcastic. "Gee, it must be great to be crazy, Sam," the Herald would say. Or, referring to his liquor-dealing backers in California, "For get expense," says Sam, "as long as the whiskey business is good."
Evans was as lavish in his personal expenses as in his publication outlay. He was generous to his friends. But the balance wheel was lacking. Finally the plant was attached for debt, Evans left town, and the Herald was alone in the field. The tortoise had beaten the hare.
The eccentricity of the Northwestern apparently is to be laid entirely at the door of the young publisher. He really had a pretty competent staff. Among those who assisted him on the morning daily were Vance Hutchins, experienced newspaperman, who made good on several other newspapers, large and small; Fred Fleet, later a most competent city editor on other Klamath papers; and Philip Sinnott, a good young reporter who later became Pacific Coast chief of NEA, national feature and pictures syndicate.
Sinnott, incidentally, moved over to the Herald before the Northwestern suspended. He contrasts the extravagance of the Northwestern with the conservatism of W. O. Smith's Herald, and describes oddities of the Northwestern's last days (157):
. . . with two dailies against him, and a boycott on top of that, Smith and his small crew "sawed wood." They cut corners, doubled in each others' jobs where it would help and despite a fine plant and a larger staff at the Northwestern, kept working away. In time the boycott was forgotten. Both papers were enterprising. But there was only so much business in a town of 6,000 population. Each received its share, but the wonderful plant of Sam Evans was expensive to operate. It could not survive on just half the business.
It went into litigation. The sheriff was placed in charge Deputies were there at all times. Evans made some financial arrangements, and through the quirks of legal channels, the Northwestern passed from the hands of the sheriff into the hands of the coroner. As a means of cutting costs, Hutchins and another employee were named deputy coroners and nominally in charge of the plant.
The struggling Herald had only a little three-column casting box when the flow of ads called for half-page layouts to be cast. (L. R.) Brooks (one of those rare specimens who excelled in all ends of the game) rose to the occasion by combining column rule, carriage-makers' clamps, and two-inch pine lumber to make casting boxes. One cast could be made from each such set-up-thereafter the lumber was chopped up to heat the office.
Dean Eric Allen, just starting his splendid school of journalism at the University of Oregon, came to Klamath Falls on a tour of Oregon papers. He expected to spend a day in the Northwestern plant and half an hour in the Herald plant. He spent the day with the Northwestern and two days with the Herald.
The greatest exhibition of creating something out o nothing I have ever seen," he declared, saying the devices created by necessity were more of an education to him than the opposition's well-appointed plant.
When E. J. Murray left the Herald he continued as a business partner with W. O. Smith in other enterprises. Finally, January 1, 1919, he purchased the Herald from Smith and carried it on until he sold to Bruce Dennis October 13, 1926.
In the meantime the Herald had done well under Smith. In fact, W. O. Smith's newspaper success had begun under his connection with the Republican. When his partner Hamaker sold out to him he let him have the half interest for $1,000, or half its original cost. Smith was easily able to buy it, for the paper had been swamped with land office and timber claim notices in those days of settlement and development.
As noted, Smith and Murray bought the Herald in 1908.
The east side-west side courthouse fight in Klamath Falls, in the course of which the city at one time had three courthouses—one half-built on the east side, an old one occupied on the west, and a new west-side one, which finally was occupied as the permanent seat of county government—added interest and excitement to Klamath Falls journalism during Smith's direction of the Herald.
Meanwhile, Smith continued the Republican for a time as a weekly, for the benefit of his rural readers. They found the service too slow, and for a time the Republican was run as a semi-weekly. Finally, the name of the semi-weekly Republican was changed to the semi-weekly Herald.
The fight with the Northwestern has been noted. With this competition out of the way the Herald had the field to itself until the Klamath News was started in 1923. Mr. Smith had an outstandingly capable staff on the Herald. Prominent among its members were Phil Sinnott, Fred Fleet, both of whom have been mentioned in connection with the Northwestern, and Fred Dunbar, who years afterward was murdered on Klamath Lake while on a vacation trip. Edison Marshall, before he got going as a fictionist, was a reporter on the Herald—"rotten," said Mr. Smith; "too much imagination." During the courthouse fight Mr. Smith brought in a chalk-plate cartoonist from Denver and had him drawing daily cartoons of the candidates "with courthouses on their backs and the like." This was something new, journalistically, and it was warmly received.
The Herald, under Mr. Murray, had two high points, its battle with Don Belding and the Record and the solution of a murder mystery by two smart staff men, William H. (Bill) Perkins, news editor, formerly police reporter on the Oregonian, and Tom Malarkey, in January, 1925. Let's tell the murder story first.
Klamath Falls was suffering something like a "crime wave" at the time of the murder mystery. Oscar Erickson, 35, was shot down in a hold-up of a card game by several masked men in the basement of the Scandinavian h. After a week, when the officials' clues had run cold, Perkins and Malarkey took a hand, and, aided by a former constable familiar with the Klamath underworld, they ran down a suspect in a lonely farmhouse west of Jacksonville, arriving there in the middle of the night, after a wild drive across the mountains through a rainstorm. Governor Walter M. Pierce had given the men authority to press their search outside of Klamath county. It took nerve to go in and get that man. They did it, and, to make a long story short, he confessed a part in the crime. He and three others whom he implicated, were arrested. One of these was acquitted the other two received life sentences, and the informant, taken by Perkins and Malarkey, 15 years.
While the war between the Herald and the Northwestern was the biggest and most interesting of Klamath's newspaper struggles, the bitterest was the strife between E. J. Murray of the Herald and Don Belding of the Record for possession of the newspaper field beginning in 1921 and lasting for several years—a struggle involving personal conflict and gunplay. Here's the story:
In the ancestry of the Klamath Falls Record was a little paper conducted at White Lake City, boom town of the Klamath basin in 1905 and 1906. This paper, called the Times, was launched there in June, 1905, by E. B. (Bert) Hall, town-site boomer, with Vance Hutchins, later Evans' city editor on the Northwestern, as managing editor. Though the town had only 200 inhabitants, Hutchins built up a circulation of 900 for the paper, whose readers were scattered through the entire Klamath country, for the Times was the only paper in the Klamath basin published outside the metropolis, and it was brightly edited.
The White Lake City boom broke when the purchase of the Weed logging road by E. H. Harriman routed the railroad away from White Lake. The paper died, and the plant, purchased by Nathan Merrill, was moved over, late in 1905, to the town named after him. Among the early editors were Vance Hutchins and G. R. Carlock. Finally Mrs. Catherine Prehm Terry, a remarkably capable newspaper woman, bought the paper for $700—$10 down. Within four months she had paid in the full amount. In a half century of newspaper experience Mrs. Terry has done about everything there is to do on a newspaper. One of her feats, accomplished in 1917, was to assemble a linotype and put it into working order—perhaps the first woman ever to do that. She had been, while setting type on a Baltimore paper as a young girl in the 80's, the first woman to operate a linotype, in the city where Mergenthaler invented it. She sold the paper, now called the Record, to W. H. Mason in 1915.[1]
The Record had already been moved to Klamath Falls when Mason purchased it. He adopted for his slogan "The Paper With out a Muzzle or a Club." It became the official publication of the Klamath county water-users. In 1920 he began publishing the Record as a daily, with United Press wire service.
Don Belding, war veteran, former Western Union operator and student at the University of Oregon, was at the time manager of the Western Union office in Klamath Falls, where he had gone from Eugene. With a yen for journalism, he left the telegraph key to become business manager of the Record. The new daily in 1921 was boasting a circulation of 1800. August 17, 1921, Mason sold his interest to a newly-formed corporation, with Clark Williams president, W. A. Wiest vice-president, and Don Belding secretary-treasurer. Williams, experienced newspaper man from the Oregonian, was made editor, Belding manager, and Howard Hill, later with the Herald, city editor. Elizabeth Grigsby did society. A. J. DeLaix was head of the mechanical department.
Within a few weeks Clark Williams relinquished his interest, and Belding was elected president. The concern was now cooperative, with stock held by several of the employees.
Then came the fight with the Herald. Both publishers, Murray and Belding, came to the conclusion that the field did not warrant two dailies, and in this opinion the business men, at a meeting held in the Presbyterian church, expressed their agreement. Finally, in an amicable understanding, October 19, 1921, Belding took a 60-day option to purchase the Evening Herald. If at the end of that period he was unable to complete the deal, the Record stock was to pass into Murray's hands. The Herald would continue as an evening daily, and the Record was to appear only on Sunday mornings. Everything was very sweet—too good, Klamath wise heads observed, to last. It didn't. Belding thought the matter over carefully, and early in December informed Murray he was not going through with the purchase. It took the courts several years to get the situation straightened out. Most of the Record plant had been moved over to the Herald building, and now Murray refused to return it to the Record. Belding had a hard time getting out a paper. Subscribers and advertisers were confused, some paying their bills to Murray, some to Belding. A midnight effort of Belding and a trucking party to move the Record material out of the Herald building met resistance on the part of Murray, who drove the invaders off the premises.
The Herald people now placed their plant under lock and key. The Record, armed with a court writ for the return of the equipment, were still defeated when Murray covered the deputy sheriff with an automatic and ordered him off the premises. The sheriff finally managed later to get the equipment segregated and got possession of the Record's property.
Suits and counter-suits followed, Murray insisting that the sheriff was acting unlawfully. Murray finally won the major suit involving the ownership of the Record, though losing some of the corollary cases. He changed the name of the Record to the Sun, after a year or so, issuing it Sundays.
In the middle of the fight over the Record (January 31, 1922) Mr. Murray announced sale of the Evening Herald to Fred Soule, who had been his city editor two years. Two years later Luther W. Rood, later with the Klamath News, was announced as having purchased the paper. Seven months later (November 15, 1924) Rood announced that Murray had taken back his stock. Then followed sale to Bruce Dennis, of the Inland Publishing Company, October 13, 1926. One of Mr. Dennis' first moves was to discontinue the Sunday Sun. Thus disappeared what had been the second eldest paper in the county.
Another interesting former competitor of the Klamath Falls Herald was the Klamath News, launched as a twice-a-week November 13, 1923, when its three founders—Nate Otterbein, Walter Stronach, and F. C. Nickle, saw in the expanding city and developing countryside, with railroad expansion in the immediate future, a chance for another newspaper.
Its expressed policy is of interest:
"To serve. To give all sides a hearing. To cater to no organzation or clique. To be independent."
The nuclues of the News plant was a Model 14 linotype owned by Mr. Otterbein, an old-time printer with experience on several papers, including the San Francisco Examiner. A bit of equipment immediately added was the first Ludlow typograph used in eastern Oregon, guaranteeing new, clear display type for every issue. A 2600-an-hour Babcock press was to run the paper. The News at the outset was tabloid—and it kept the five-column format throughout its twice-a-week and thrice-a-week days (it became a tri-weekly June 2, 1924); but on becoming a daily on its first anniversary (November 12, 1924) changed to the seven-column size. The paper has had wire news service from the first few months of its existence
The News got out its first extra November 5, 1924, to announce the election of Coolidge and Dawes. News editors of the paper were, successively, F. C. Nickle, Charles Rood, J. W. McDonald (now a prominent sports writer in San Francisco), Edwin Rose.
Bruce Dennis of La Grande, who a short time before had purchased the Herald, announced April 21, 1927, his purchase of the News and the consolidation of the two papers. It was the hope of Mr. Dennis to keep the papers competitive, though produced in a single plant. Each had its own individual staff.
Otterbein remained for a time as city editor, then was followed successively, by Howard Winnard, U. of O. journalism student, a promising writer, who lost his life in an automobile accident in 1928; Bert W. Holloway, another former student at the school of journalism, who moved on up to Boston; and Robert H. Galloway, from the same school.
In June, 1932, Mr. Dennis sold the papers to Frank Jenkins, Ernest Gilstrap, and Eugene Kelty, all formerly of the Eugene Register. After a time Mr. Kelty withdrew from the association, known as the Southern Oregon Publishing Company. The Jenkins-Gilstrap direction continues (1939) with Malcolm Epley, formerly of the Eugene Register, as managing editor.
The Klamath Basin Progress, now occupying the weekly field in Klamath Falls, was started in 1924 by Tom W. Shaughnessy, formerly a printer on the Oregon Journal, as the Malin Progress; it was then published in the town of Malin. The next year the paper was purchased by the Farmers' Publishing Co., which installed A. M. Thomas as editor. The paper was at the same time raised from a six-column folio to a seven-column. The subscription price was $2. The paper was moved to Klamath Falls in 1928. In September, 1931, Lee B. Tuttle, veteran Oregon editor and publisher, and Walter Stronach, who had been one of the founders of the News, purchased a controlling interest in the publishing company, and Mr. Tuttle for a time acted as editor. Later (1933) Robert H. Galloway, formerly managing editor of the News, was made editor of the Progress. He left late in 1934. His successor as editor is Embert Fosum, Klamath Falls man, who had been graduated from the University of Oregon school of journalism the year before. Mr. Stronach is manager.
Bonanza.—The Bonanza Bulletin was a picturesque little paper which ran from 1906 to 1914 and survived the city's disastrous conflagration of 1909 only to be wiped out in a much smaller fire involving its own building. The Bulletin was founded by Charles Pattee and Frank Salcedio in May, 1906 (159). J. O. Hamaker, whose brother, J. Wesley, had steered W. O. Smith into Klamath journalism back in 1903, purchased the paper in August of 1906 from Salcedio and assumed the indebtedness. The plant consisted of one case of ten-point, one of 18, and one of 24, an Army press, and a stock of six-column news print.
When the fatal fire came in January 1914 and destroyed the Bulletin building, one month after $4,000 insurance on the enlarged plant and building had been allowed to lapse, the Bulletin came out with an 8×1O-inch edition, carrying an account of the fire taken from Sam Evans' Northwestern, and an announcement that publication would be resumed in the spring. The optimistic announcement was not carried out.
There are a lot of good incidental stories in the newspaper life of early Klamath papers. Nate Otterbein (died 1938) told one dealing with his work as a printer on the Bonanza Bulletin when he first came to the Klamath country.
Chap Graves (he said in the News and Herald Supplement, January, 1937, page 4) was running the Bonanza Bulletin, and his printer was off on leave of absence for some reason or other. Chap tried to hire me to assist in getting out the next issue. I was still holding a situation on the San Francisco Examiner, and explained to him that I was not at liberty to hire out to any one under the circumstances, but assured him that there was no rule to keep me from helping him out as a friend.
Worked for him three days to get out that issue, and when he asked me how much he owed me, I told him that he didn't owe me anything. But I did suggest that as I was thoroughly imbued with a dread of snake bites, if he could secure about a quart of preventative for me it would be very acceptable; that as I was a stranger it would be very difficult for me to procure it. (The county was under local option). He said he would do his best but had doubts as to his success. He left the office, and was gone for about an hour, when he returned and reported an absolute failure, but suggested that if I was to call on a certain party he thought I might have more success. Desperate conditions require desperate remedies, and I called on the party referred to, made known my desires and needs and was handed the goods nicely wrapped, with the admonition: "The next time you need anything like this, come after it yourself; don't send the justice of the peace." Chap had never mentioned he was an officer of the law.
Bonanza's present paper, the Free Press, is (1939) owned by Mrs. Catherine Prehm Terry and managed by Mr. and Mrs Thomas Wilson.
The Bly Review, a Thursday weekly, independent Democratic, was established in Bly by A. E. McDonald in 1929. It is continuing under the same direction.
Chiloquin.—The Priaulx family, active in Oregon journalism and politics, makes it headquarters at Chiloquin, busy lumbering town of Klamath county. Arthur W. Priaulx (pronounced Pree-o), later chosen chairman of the Republican state central committee, in which capacity he headed two campaigns, started the Review in 1925. Chiloquin was a shack town when the paper was launched. "Ten years full of work, pioneering and roughing it, to help carve a city out of a pine wilderness," is the way the editor expressed it in a retrospective editorial at the end of the first ten years. W. A. Priaulx father of the publisher, is an old-time publisher-printer who has been associated with a multitude of country papers since he made his start in 1890. The present manager is Edouard Priaulx. Arthur is in Eugene publishing the Eugene News.
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