Page:History of Oregon Newspapers.pdf/349

340 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