# History of Oregon Newspapers/Clatsop County

CLATSOP
Astoria.—Astoria journalism goes back to August 1864, when James Newton Gale, recently from Eugene, Salem, and Portland, where he had edited papers (as told in the appropriate spots of this work), started the old Marine Gazette. Gale, as George H. Himes and Airs. A. C. Barette of Eugene, Gale's daughter, recall, was in vited to Astoria by a group of promoters. His wife, sister of H. R. Kincaid, Eugene publisher, did not like Astoria, and he moved on to Puget Sound within a year, becoming a pioneer publisher in the new territory of Washington.
He was succeeded by W. W. Parker, son-in-law of W. L. Adams, remembered as the able and caustic founder of the Oregon City Argus. Parker is supposed to have been helped and coached by Adams, for he was not himself a newspaper man. Adams had gone to Astoria as collector of customs, a reward for his part in directing organization of the young Republican party in Oregon. (72).
Adams had purchased the Spectator plant for $1200 after the suspension of Oregon's first newspaper, and it was type from the Spectator which was used in printing, first the Argus, then the Marine Gazette. The Oregon State Journal of Eugene was printed on ​the Spectator's old Washington hand-press, which is now preserved relic at the University of Oregon Press, Eugene, having been presented to the School of Journalism by H. R. and W. L. Kincaid after the suspension of the State Journal.
The Marine Gazette, a four-page paper of six wide (15-em) columns, died with No. 6 of volume 3 (September 24, 1866); but it is remembered as a good little paper, which left its mark in Oregon as having published anonymously in serial form W. H. Gray's History of Oregon until its suspension interrupted.
Announcement of publication of the history was made in the issue of August 15, 1865, under the general head of "Local and Miscellaneous Items." The sidehead read: "Interesting History," and here is the announcement:
   We have engaged one of the earliest American settlers on the Oregon coast, an intelligent and entirely reliable person, to write a complete history of Oregon settlers and settlements, their influence upon each other and upon the natives, and foreign settlements among them, from about 1836 to 1850, giving a complete political, religious, and social history of the country during that period, which we shall publish in the Gazette, commencing with the next number, and occupying from one to two columns in each paper. These articles, which will last a year or more, will be worth more than the price of the paper a year.
It was D. W. Craig, Adams' warm friend and former associate on the Argus, friend and law pupil of Abraham Lincoln, who suggested to Mr. Gray that he publish his history in book form. Gray and Craig corresponded in 1867, the year after the Marine Gazette's demise. Craig wrote Gray (March 31 of that year): "Not one in a thousand ever saw or heard of that sheet (the Gazette), on account of its limited circulation, and your writing through that medium was like wasting your breath on the desert air. I would like very much to see your history undertaken and finished in a permanent form as the events embraced in the time it treats of were of vast moment in the life of the Northwest coast." (73).
A prospectus of Gray's history was issued by H. G. Walling & Co., book and job printers of Portland, in the same year, but Gray's book ultimately was done in 1870 by another house.
The history was carried in the Gazette under the heading: "History of the First Efforts to Settle an American Family in Oregon" by "An Oregonian Since 1836." Six columns of this was carried in the issue of July 2, 1866.
The paper carried considerable news, written rather formlessly. The victory of the Union party at the preceding election received nine lines, together with a two-column table of the general results by ​counties. "Pretty good" was the comment at the close of the little story.
Parker, though getting out rather a creditable paper, assisted by his wife, Inez Adams Parker, had not his father-in-law's flair for journalism. He suspended the paper, apparently, because he preferred to do something else. At the time, he was helping his father-in-law in the custom-house. When he got ready to suspend, he just stopped, announcing the "Close of the Gazette" as follows:
   The occasion of this so sudden stoppage is the demand upon our time and services, which are necessarily very fully occupied in other unavoidable duties. We tried much, and offered very reasonable inducements over a year since, to get someone who had time to spare to undertake the conduct of the Gazette; but, as no one else would undertake it, we did.
   The paper has been as remunerative as was anticipated an<d is now nearly or quite self-sustaining. The fact is established that a small paper properly managed in Astoria pay all expenses except editorial services.
Here is a reflection on the rather slight value placed by early publishers on "editorial services." The publishers were, for the most part, printers or perhaps lawyers. Copy was largely "reprint." Preparation of local news copy ranked very low in the scale of appreciation in those days.
   We part company (Parker concluded) with our little circle of readers with much reluctance, though mingled with joy for the anticipated release from the drudgery of looking over 30 exchanges and making up thence or otherwise the very limited contents of such a paper as the Gazette has been The Gazette press and office goes to Oregon City, where will be issued from it, we understand, a lively country paper. THE EDITOR.
The "lively country paper" was the Oregon City Enterprise, which was to come from the press October 27 of the same year. Seven years later DeWitt Clinton Ireland, founder of the Enterprise, was to establish in Astoria a newspaper which, like the Enterprise, has come right on down to the present.
Ireland, the founder of the Astorian, was a Vermont Yankee, born on the Fourth of July 1836 at Rutland. He learned the printing trade sticking type on a small religious and educational paper while he was attending an Episcopal school for boys at Mishawaka, Ind There he worked also on the Mishawaka Free Press, of which Schuyler Colfax, later vice-president of the United States, was editor. This paper, the first copy of which is retained by the Ireland family, is still published, now known as the Enterprise.
Before coming west (74) he worked on the Chicago Herald and ​later on the Detroit Free Press under W. F. Storey. He was already a reporter when Lincoln was nominated for the presidency.
One of Mr. Ireland's first typesetting "sits" was on the New York Tribune, where he was one of the few typos who could decipher Horace Greeley's notorious scrawl. (75).
Before coming to Oregon in 1861 D. C. Ireland worked in the Scribner book-publishing plant in New York City. Later while fore man, for several years, of the printing plant in the state penitentiary at Jackson, Mich., he invented the side arms of the Gordon job press. Up to that time pulleys and belts had been used to transmit the power to the wheels.
While in St. Paul employed as a printer on the Pioneer Press he married Olive Lightburn, adopted daughter of Mr. Prentiss, publisher of the paper. Just before starting west he served 90 days as a volunteer in the Union army. In the spring of 1862 he started west across the plains, bringing with him a stallion that became famous as a sire. The name was Emigrant. A short period of work on "the old mission farm" at The Dalles, two years on the Oregon City Enterprise, a spell of running a pack train into the Boise basin placer diggings, a bit of prospecting on the Fraser river, in British Columbia, where he made some money, a successful investment in an Astoria salmon cannery, and he was ready to start the Astorian.
Mr. Ireland started both the Weekly (Friday) and the Daily Astorian. The daily was launched May 1, 1876, ten years after he had started the Oregon City Enterprise, three years after the Weekly Historian, and one year after his son, Clinton L., who has devoted a lifetime to publishing in Oregon, was born in Astoria.
The Daily Astorian was a neat little five-column folio, of which the Vancouver (Wash.) Independent said a few days later: "It makes the best first appearance of any daily ever started in Oregon. . . . well filled with advertisements . . . a newsy sheet."
One feature which would distinguish it from the papers of today was the 16-section head on the telegraph news of the day, all of which was run under the one heading.
Mr. Ireland had led up to the daily by issuing a thrice-a-week within six months of the launching of the weekly.
In January 1877 the Astorian installed a steam engine to operate its press. "The steam engine is pronounced a perfect success," chuckled the paper in its issue of January 11, 1877.
Ireland sold the paper to John F. Halloran in 1880 for $10,000 in gold. (76).
After several changes of ownership succeeding Halloran, who associated with him P. W. Parker (77), the Astorian was purchased by John S. Dellinger in 1903, and Mr. Dellinger published the paper until his death February 3, 1930. Mr. Dellinger was a publisher of ​experience in the Middle West before coming to the Pacific Coast in 1891. His first Oregon venture was the Bay City Tribune, a weekly paper, which he conducted for two years before moving to Astoria. For a time he published two newspapers from his printing shop—the Astoria Daily News and the Nehalem Herald. In 1897 he was associated with O. W. Dunbar, also of Astoria, in shipping a newspaper plant to Alaska, where Dunbar published Alaska's first daily newspaper, the Skagway Morning Alaskan. After publishing the Port Oregon Tribune at Warrenton for a time, he purchased the Morning Astorian from Lyle & Patterson.
The Astorian led the whole West in replacing hand composition with machines.
Of several versions, the Editor & Publisher account (78) of the coming of the linotype to Astoria and to Oregon checks best with the records of the Mergenthaler Linotype Co. The date was 1892; Ore gon led the Pacific Coast, for there was no linotype in California or Washington at that time; and Astoria led Oregon. A current story, based on fallible memory, that Samuel Elmore, fish-canner, then financial backer of the Astorian, saw the machine on exhibition at the Chicago world's fair and immediately ordered one for his paper, is discredited by two facts—the linotype was shipped from the factory at Brooklyn August 15, 1892 (79), and the world's fair, opened a year late, did not swing its gates to the public until the next year.
This machine, serial number 578, was lost in the Astoria fire of December 1922.
The facts as related in Editor & Publisher were, that P. W. Parker of Parker & Halloran, publishers of the paper, convinced from the performance of the machines in the New York Tribune office and at many other points in the East, that the new invention was practical and economical, made a trip to New York to get one. At that time the company was renting, rather than selling, the machines, then called by the operators Mergenthalers (generally "Mergs") from their inventor rather than Linotypes from their operation. Astoria, however, was so far away as to involve excessive shipping charges, and to get No. 578 Mr. Parker had to buy it.
Astoria now became a sort of holy city for the printers who wished to keep abreast of their vocation. There was a constant effort to get work there, and many an operator who has since put in a life time on the linotype learned its operation on the little paper at the mouth of the Columbia.
Seven months later the Oregon Statesman at Salem purchased two machines, followed the next year by the Oregonian, Portland, with eight.
John E. and William F. Gratke in 1919 sold the Budget, founded in 1892, to a group headed by E. B. Aldrich, editor of the East Oregonian; and Merle R. Chessman, Mr. Aldrich's news editor, was ​sent to Astoria to assume the editorship. He is now entering his twenty-first year on the job—during which time the paper has grown tremendously, promoted civic development, and survived all its competition.
Astoria's biggest story was the fire disaster of December 8, 1922, which laid waste the business section of town with millions of dollars loss and incidentally wiped out the newspaper plants of both the Asorian and the Budget. Both papers mingled firefighting and relief with the publication of extras in other plants. The Finnish paper Toveri and the Seaside Signal plants were used until the Astorian and the Budget could replace and repair their destroyed and damaged equipment. Portland papers sent down full staffs to cover the disaster. The Telegram sent David W. Hazen, Lawrence Davies, Gardiner P. Bissell, and Earl W. Murphy. The Oregonian's contingent consisted of James D. Olson, Floyd W. Maxwell, and Jay Allen; for the Journal, Phil Parrish and George S. O'Neal; News, Tom E. Shea.
Only one issue of an Astoria paper was missed as a result of the disaster, but it took the finest courage and cooperation to keep the continuity. The Astorian was defeated on the day of the fire because the power went off just as the paper was going on the press. The day after the fire the Astorian declared in an editorial:
   Astoria will not stand in stunned dismay, pondering on a past disaster. . . . Let every citizen unite with the common purpose to advance, to grow again; let none lag; let none be dismayed. . . . "Let's go."
This slogan was rattled from typewriters set up on packing-boxes in temporary editorial quarters (80). Rescued linotypes echoed the command. Every man of the Astorian and Budget staffs was on the job every minute. The Budget's loss was particularly heavy; not only was its plant, including three linotypes, a Ludlow typograph, and three job presses, damaged beyond repair, but also its new building, of which only the walls were left standing. The Astorian saved two of its linotypes, though losing the historic machine that had intro duced line-casting composition in Oregon. Typical of what the whole Astoria newspaper gang was doing, the Astorian staff worked 44 hours without sleep from the time disaster struck. Within four days the papers were printing their regular-sized editions, and before the end of the month had new machinery replacing the old destroyed.
It was the judgment of newspapermen that the Astoria fire-sufferers acted in keeping with the best traditions of journalism in emergency.
After the death of Mr. Dellinger (1930) the Astorian was merged with the Astoria Budget, its younger afternoon competitor, and the combined paper, the Astorian-Budget, is edited by Merle ​R. Chessman, who had been editor of the Evening Budget. He has been an outstanding Oregon journalist since his graduation from the University of Oregon in 1909. While on the Pendleton East Oregonian, before going to Astoria as editor of the Budget, he achieved a widening repute as a columnist. At Astoria he has won recognition for public service, both through his editorial utterances and his personal work for Astoria through federal departments and bureaus at Washington.
Among the editors who worked on the Astorian besides P. W. Parker, of a pioneer Astoria family, were E. W. Wright, later marine editor of the Oregonian, famed as the author of the Marine History of the Northwest, and J. L. Duffy, characterized by John E. Gratke, old-time Astoria publisher, as the "classic editor" of the Astorian.
Among the reporters were John R. Rathom, later editor of the Providence Journal; John Barrett, who became minister to Siam and the head of the Pan-American Union; Samuel L. Simpson, the "poet laureate" of Oregon.
Simpson, a newspaper man by vocation and a poet by talents and inclination, "takes front rank," as Alfred Powers expressed it, (81) "with Burns and Poe, among the drinking poets. He was a member of the staff of Dunbar and Gratke's Astoria Budget when he wrote (in 1896) the ode on "The Launching of the Battleship Oregon," which was built at the Union Iron Works, San Francisco. Bob Johnson, Corvallis newspaper veteran, who knew him well, gives a reasonable version of why it was that the ode had to be telegraphed to San Francisco to be read at the launching. Simpson had been commissioned to write the dedicatory verses. Day followed day; no poetry. The muse was elusive, and the thirsty bard sought spirituous inspiration. Sam delayed, and waited, and proscrastinated, and well, anyhow, Narcissus White Kinney of Astoria, who was to read the poem, took her train for San Francisco without it. As the eleventh hour approached, Simpson's friends put on the pressure. Sam wrote the poem in Oscar Dunbar's house, and, as Merle Chessman tells it, the business men of Astoria made up a purse (82) to pay the wire tolls, and the poem of 78 lines, which is found in his published works, was telegraphed through in time to be read at the launching.
Astoria was the home port of a long list of newspapers, some reference to which will be made in these pages. The two most important of all, however, are the Astorian, already noted, and the Budget. The Budget was founded as a weekly in October, 1892, by Oscar W. Dunbar, native Oregonian, born in the Waldo hills near Salem, and John E. Gratke. Dunbar was one of the most picturesque, fightingest characters ever connected with Oregon journalism. Let us sketch in a bit of his remarkable career
He learned the printer's trade on the Oregonian, became a ​charter member of the typographical union in Portland, worked for a time as a printer in Seattle, had been a reporter on the Call and the Chronicle in San Francisco, and already had started three newspapers — the Star of Victoria, B. C., the East Portland Star, and the Astoria Town Talk.
Illness of his little daughter, Claire Agnes (now Mrs. Claire Dunbar Roberts, dramatic reader, of Spokane) had caused Dunbar to leave Portland for the coast, and he took a position on the Astoria Pioneer, edited by D. C. Ireland.
Difference of opinion with the editor caused two of the Pioneer's printers to quit—Dunbar and C. J. Curtis. The result was two more weekly papers for Astoria, the Herald, with Curtis as editor, and the Town Talk, with Dunbar editor—in 1890.
After two years as editor of the Town Talk, Mr. Dunbar started the Budget, evening except Sunday, and weekly, taking in with him as partner a young man who eight years before had begun a career of nearly forty successful years in Astoria journalism —John E. Gratke, who was editor of the Budget from 1897 to 1920.
The "Oregon style" of personal journalism, lively with invective, prevailed in Astoria; but did not affect the editor's personal relations. The editors, as Mr. Dunbar's daughter expressed it later, "were very friendly enemies, ripping and roaring at each other through the papers, but understanding friends on the outside."
When Dunbar started Town Talk, he lost no time in getting the community to buzzing. A leading citizen was "Slippery Slim" in the columns of the paper, and, as Mrs. Roberts recalls, the newsboys on the street used to call "Town Talk! All about Slippery Sam!" and even the parrot out in front of Jeffries' saloon joined in the chorus. Then one fatal day the paper went a step too far and slipped "Slippery Sam" in with his surname. The startling allegations made brought on a criminal libel case, and the editor was sentenced by Judge Frank Taylor to a year in the county jail. Indignation in Astoria was widespread, for Dunbar's friends were many. "The deputy sheriff," Mrs. Roberts recalls, "gave up his room to my father. Citizens declared they would furnish the deputy's room with the finest furniture that could be had if my father were not pardoned within the month. Thirty-five citizens went to the jail during visiting hours the first Sunday and asked admittance. They perched every where.
"A petition was gotten up and signed by hundreds of citizens. My mother and I took it to Governor Pennoyer in Portland. [The governor issued the pardon.]
"While in jail my father continued to write his scathing stories. He had so many enemies who were willing to do anything that my mother tied the petition to my body and never let me out of her sight as we went on the old steamer Telephone, and even as we went to ​the Governor's home. The petition was granted, and in two weeks and three days from the time he was jailed my father was freed. The brass band came to the jail. My mother, father, and myself were driven through the city, and my father was presented with a beautiful watch . . . for his fearlessness."
This fighting editor did not hesitate to criticise the courts — which was the root of much of his trouble. On one occasion he contrasted the treatment given a rich saloonkeeper, who got off with a year for a killing, with that of another man, an obscure fisherman, who drew a three-year sentence for stealing two salmon. Frequency of "shanghai-ing" also came in for scathing comment by the editor.
The Alaska gold rush was on in 1897, when the adventurous editor sold out to his partner, John E. Gratke, and left for the north. He reached Skagway September 12, 1897, set up a printing plant in a ramshackle old shed, and less than two months after the little old steamer Portland had started all the gold excitement by bringing its famous "ton of gold" into Seattle harbor, Dunbar launched the Alaskan, the first daily newspaper in the great northern territory. Dunbar's "silent partner" in the enterprise, as noted elsewhere, was John S. Dellinger, later publisher of the Astorian.
It is a great temptation to wander off here and tell the story of Oscar Dunbar's encounters with Jefferson R. ("Soapy") Smith, the murderous gambler-boss of Skagway, who ruled the town with a gang of terrorists until Marshal Frank H. Reid, formerly of Whatcom, Wash., shot him to death in a duel on the old wharf, giving his own life for the safety of his people. Suffice it to say that Smith's offer to give Dunbar $50 an issue for keeping his name out of the paper was scorned, with all the theatricals which the fighting editor liked so well, and Dunbar never did give in to the gang, though on one occasion it took a melodramatic last-minute rush by a band of citizens to save him from Soapy and his gang. (83).
The daughter, incidentally, then a young girl, became the first woman newspaper reporter in Alaska. Selling the Alaskan, Dunbar conducted two other publications (the Skagway Budget and the Alaska Travelers' Guide). He went to Pendleton in 1902 and died there March 18, 1904. (84).
In a brief account of Astoria's journalism, written a short time before his death in 1936, John E. Gratke mentions the Eagle as one of a number of newspapers "born at intervals in Astoria that now slumber in the graveyard of the Fourth Estate."
Some of the others:
There was the Transcript, a Saturday weekly started by Snyder Bros, in 1881 and conducted for a few years.
The Independent, launched in 1883, ran as an evening daily for nearly three years.
The Astoria Gateway-Herald, weekly, was conducted from 1885 ​to 1888 by A. V. R. Snyder, lately city editor of The Dalles Times-Mountaineer.
The Press, a Friday weekly started in 1887, was edited and published through to 1892 by Irving McQuary.
The Pioneer, already mentioned, was launched by D. C. Ireland, who had sold the Astorian in 1880 and lost the money in a salmon cannery. It saw the light in 1887 as a morning paper competing with the Astorian. Editor in 1889 was C. J. Curtis. The paper was discontinued in 1891 after both Curtis and Oscar Dunbar had left Ireland and started those papers of their own, the Herald and Town Talk. The Herald ran weekly on Sunday until 1895, when its publication day was changed to Saturday. It was dead in 1907. Town Talk, first a Saturday weekly, then an evening paper (except Sunday) with a Friday weekly, ran until 1892, when its publisher, Dunbar, started the Budget.
D. C. Ireland appears again as an Astoria publisher with his Express, started in 1890 as a weekly and running for a year or so.
The Examiner, an evening paper, is credited by Ayer's directory to the Town Talk Printing and Publishing Co. Weekly, 1889, Friday; evening except Sunday 1891; not listed in 1895.
The Columbian, started as a weekly in 1881, became a morning daily in 1890, with L. G. Carpenter editor. It had dropped out of the field by 1892.
A daily which occupied the evening field for several years was the News, started in 1895. It was dead by 1907. The paper was independent in politics. It was credited by Ayer's in 1897 with 700 subscribers. In 1905, combined with the Herald, it was running daily except Monday as the News-Herald.
The Acorn, established in 1894 as a Friday Democratic weekly by Percy B. Sooly publisher with A. A. Cleveland editor. It ran for three years.
Then there was the Leader, a paper published in 1907 from the Owl Printery as an independent weekly. W. L. Thorndyke was editor.
Two of the latest publications to try the Astoria field were the Times, weekly, launched in 1922 by Owen Merrick and J. E. Myers, and the Morning Messenger, started in 1931, with Samuel T. Hopkins, formerly of the Vancouver (Wash.) Evening Columbian, as editor. The Times suspended in 1923 and the Messenger in 1934.
Astoria papers and editors have, rather consistently, enjoyed a high standing in Oregon journalism. Public service, or what the editor regarded as such, has loomed large in the editorial conscious ness. It was so right from the beginning. When D. C. Ireland started the Astorian in 1873 he had as one of his great aims promotion of a law compelling free pilotage into the Columbia. This took some ​nerve, in what was then one of the most lawless towns on the Pacific Coast. It meant inviting the active enmity of a crew of dangerous men in days when shooting and shanghai-ing were bits of ordinary routine. Success was not to come for many years, but Ireland made the first courageous effort.
The first of the newspapers printed in Finnish in Astoria, which has a large Finnish fishing population, was the Unsi Kotimaa, published weekly from 1881 to 1890 by August Nylund. Then came the Lannetar, adso a weekly, launched in 1890 and issued Fridays by Adoph Ruppa, editor; Alex Ketonen and J. E. Saari publishers. The directories failed to list the paper during the depression period of the middle 90's; but it was started again in 1897, issued Thursdays by the Lannetar Publishing Company, with H. A. Harper editor. In 1900 V. E. Bergman was editor and C. C. Rosenberg publisher; two years later Rosenberg was both editor and publisher, and by 1906 the paper was dead.
It was followed (1907) by the Toveri, established November 7 of that year. The publisher was the Western Workmen's Publishing Society. The paper, a labor publication, ran first as a twice-a-week, then as a thrice-a-week for the first few years and was changed into a daily in 1912. In 1930 the editor and several members of the staff were arrested on charges of communism, and some of the staff members were deported to Russia. At the end of 1930 the paper was consolidated with the Tyomies and moved to Superior, Wis. The, Toveritar, weekly edition, ran parallel for several years.
The Lannen Suometar, founded in 1922, has been conducted as a Tuesday-Friday semi-weekly by the Finnish Lutheran Book Concern, with H. L. Olilla editor and general manager.
One of the outstanding bits of work of an Astoria news man was not a news story at all but a book—The Memoirs of~Li Hung Chang, by Maj. W. Francis Mannix, who for several years up to his death in 1922 was news editor of the Astorian. Major Mannix, a clever writer, took rank through the authorship of that book, with the great hoaxers of history. For the work, published in England and America about 25 years ago, was exposed as a fake by Ralph D. Paine, noted war correspondent and writer on journalistic subjects, who had known Mannix in the Orient. Mannix had fooled not only the critics but such eminent authorities on Oriental affairs as John W. Foster, American secretary of state. The ingenuity of the book was marvelous—and all the writer had to start with was service as a private in the Ninth Infantry with the American forces in the Boxer rebellion of 1900 and books on China he had studied while in jail in Honolulu. His imagination did the rest. (85).
Seaside.—E. N. Hurd, with 17 consecutive years as publisher of set up a record the Seaside Signal, weekly published Wednesdays, which Max Schafer, who succeeded him as publisher in 1928, is ​crawling up on as fast as time will let him. The paper was established in 1905 by R. M. Watson, who issued the paper on Saturdays. In 191 1 Watson was succeeded by E. N. Hurd and W. B. Scott as editors, who changed the publication day to Wednesday. The paper has undergone several changes of size. Hurd was in charge alone in 1912, and it was 1928 before Max Schafer formed the Seaside Publishing Company and started putting out the Signal as an independent Republican paper. Schafer is a University of Oregon graduate, son of Dr. Joseph Schafer, who for many years was head of the University's history department. Before going to Seaside he was a member of Herbert J. Campbell's staff on the Vancouver (Wash). Evening Columbian.
In August 1933 Mr. Hurd purchased the Ventura County (Calif.) News, a weekly paper.
Another paper, the Sentinel, a Republican Saturday weekly, ran from 1903 to 1906. C. J. Curtis was editor.
Warrenton.—John S. Dellinger, best known in connection with the Astorian, helped found Warrenton's first paper, the Port Oregon Tribune, a Friday weekly, Republican, in 1896. Dellinger & Mason were listed in Ayer's as editors and publishers. Three years later G. G. Haley became editor and publisher. The publication was suspended in 1906. The paper, four pages, six columns, sold for $2 a year.
Warrenton's next paper was the News, founded February 1, 1915, by E. H. Flagg. It was consolidated in 1926 with the Warrenton Argus, established in the previous year by G. Clifford Barlow. The consolidated paper was suspended in 1929.