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Rh owner of The Argus on April 16, 1859, but he retained his former employer as editor until October 24, 1863. On that date The Statesman and The Argus consolidated and continued publication under the name of The Statesman.

The Western Star was the fourth paper published in Oregon. This paper was first published at Milwaukie, on November 21, 1850, but in May, 1851, was moved to Portland. Here the name The Western Star was dropped and a new one, The Oregon Weekly Times, was selected for the issue of June 5, 1851.

The Weekly Oregonian, the fifth paper in Oregon, was started December 4, 1850, at Portland. Its press was purchased in 1852 by T. F. McElroy and J. W. Wiley, who took it to Olympia and on it printed The Columbian, the first paper north of the Columbia River. The first issue was dated Saturday, September 11, 1852. Six months later the editor told of his struggles as follows: "We commenced publication without a subscriber and without a dollar. Since that time we have kept 'batch,' done our own cooking and our own washing, our own mending, cut our own wood, made our own fires, washed our own dishes, swept out our own office, made up our own bed, and composed our own editorials out of the cases—writing paper being luxuries which we have been deprived of—and done our own press work. Now we have three hundred and fifty subscribers." Under such difficulties were some of the earlier papers on the Pacific Coast produced.

At Monterey, Robert Semple, former editor of The Philadelphia North American, and the Reverend Walter Colton, Chaplain of the United States Frigate Congress, brought out the first paper in California on August 15, 1846. It was most appropriately called The Californian. In a book which Colton later published, he described his partner at the time the paper was brought out as follows: "He is in buck-skin dress and fox-skin cap; he is true with his rifle, ready with his pen and quick at the type-case."

Colton once asserted that the materials in his office had been used by a Roman Catholic monk in printing a few sectarian