Page:History of Oregon Newspapers.pdf/241

232 Times-Gazette? A coin was flipped, as Mr. Moore tells it, and it was the Gazette-Times thereafter. The first issue of the combined paper was published June 15, 1909, with Mr. Moore editor and Mr. Springer publisher. The next year the first linotype in Corvallis was installed, with George Koch operator.

The present editor of the Gazette-Times, Claude E. Ingalls, came to Corvallis in 1915 from Washington, Kansas, where he had been publisher of the Republican-Register, and bought the paper. In 1920 the firm was made up of Mr. Ingalls, Mr. Springer, G. Lansing Hurd, who was business manager (now secretary of the Santa Rosa (Calif.) Chamber of Commerce), and Mr. Moore, who had come back to the paper after a year in California. C. A. Sprague, Ritzville (Washington) publisher, and M. K. Myers, of Portland, later made up the firm. Mr. Sprague, now publisher of the Oregon Statesman at Salem, came to the G-T in 1925 and Mr. Myers in 1923. Mr. Sprague withdrew from the Corvallis paper in 1936, and the partnership is now made up of Mr. Ingalls and Mr. Myers. In 1926 the firm erected its own publishing plant and increased its linotype battery to three machines. The plant was laid out and arranged by H. M. Lehnert, superintendent of the mechanical department, whose wife (Pansy Peters) was a compositor on the first daily issued in the town. Mr. Ingalls has served several terms as president of the variously-titled state editorial association, which finally became the Oregon Newspaper Publishers' Association.

Corvallis has been the seat of several other publications, some of which may be mentioned here. A semi-monthly known as the Home Guard was running in 1883. A monthly named the Oregon Colonist and Resources of the Willamette Valley, devoted to the attraction of immigration to that part of Oregon, ran from 1881 to 1885. Wallis and C. F. Nash were editors and publishers. The publication was supported by the railroad interests. W. T. Hoff man started a paper called the Hornet April 1, 1887. Soon gone. The Western Pedagogue, launched as an education monthly in 1889, ran for several years. C. Elton Blanchard was editor. The Western Pedagogue was moved in November 1893, to Drain, then seat of a state normal school, where publication was continued for a time by Byrd Bros.

The Benton County Republican was launched in 1906 as a Thursday weekly, Smith & Morgan publishers. The paper ran for several years with a fair measure of success.

Philomath.—Dr. John B. Horner, Oregon historian, was the editor of the first newspaper published in Philomath. He and J. C. Leasure were editors and publishers of the weekly Crucible, published Thursdays in the little college town while Horner was a student there. This was in 1877. The paper consisted of four pages, 24×36, most of which was filled with matter pertaining to