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Heppner.—J. H. Stine of Walla Walla, Washington, father of many Oregon newspapers, launched the Heppner Gazette, first newspaper in Morrow county, bringing the first number off the press March 30, 1883. Heppner was small and struggling in those days, and the battle between the honest, hardy pioneers and the rougher element parasitic on the new communities was by no means over when Stine arrived to start his paper.

The publisher moved a small printing plant (Washington handpress, etc.) from Portland. After a short time Stine, as was his wont, disposed of the new paper. The purchaser was John W. Redington, old scout and Indian-fighter, who gave his friend Owen Wister a lot of his "stuff" for The Virginian, first and perhaps greatest of all westerns. Colonel Redington, was chief of scouts for Gen. O. O. Howard, who once wrote a glowing tribute to his scout's courage, resourcefulness, and industry. Colonel Redington carried these qualities into his editorial work. Years before, he had worked on the Oregon Statesman and on the Willamette Valley Farmer for S. A. Clarke.

Redington was, withal, a humorist, and eccentric. When he arrived in Heppner, where he remained for five years, he had just finished a season of fighting Indians, and the prospect of a little more fighting didn't distress him. On the Gazette he became one of the best-known editors in Oregon. He was always picturesque. While running the Gazette, he had painted snappy signs on fence boards and rocks all over the countryside advertising his newspaper. "The Heppner Gazette" read one of the signs, "Hell on Horse Thieves and Hypocrites," and another proclaimed "The Heppner Gazette Bangup for Bustles."

Heppner's second paper, the Times, entered the field in the early 80's. The editor, Homer Hallock, was young and inexperienced, and he failed to keep the paper going long.

The Morrow County Record was the predecessor of the second paper known as the Times. The Record was established in 1890 as a Thursday weekly organ of the Farmers' Alliance. John Coffee, who bought in the plant of the defunct Lexington Budget, launched the new paper. It had a hard time. Successive owners of the Record, during its five years of struggle, were Coffee, A. H. Hicks, Vawter Crawford, and Thomas Nelson. Nelson, in a note to the writer of this history, many years later, told the story of those days most strikingly. He wrote: "In 1894 I was foreman of the Heppner Gazette, and in 1895 I conducted the Heppner Record. Otis and