Page:History of Oregon Newspapers.pdf/412

Rh When A. C. Wrenn, backed by the Klamath Development Company, took over the paper, he threw out the name and called his purchase the Pioneer Press.

Making a trip to San Francisco, Wrenn obtained an adequate mechanical equipment and proceeded to reverse every policy of his predecessor. He substituted International News Service and other wire service for the "shortest-leased" grapevine. Taylor had been dry; the Pioneer Press advocated liquor licenses. Taylor had favored keeping the courthouse where it was; Wrenn pushed the claims of the Hot Springs location. He raised the size of the paper from four to eight pages.

Among the editors of the Republican was Capt. Oliver Cromwell Applegate, who had been for a time editor of the Ashland Tidings, in the 70's, when the Tidings was the big paper of southern Oregon, circulating freely in the Klamath country. Captain Applegate directed the Republican during one of its hot political fights. One of his big stories as a newspaper man was his account of the hanging of Captain Jack and his associates at Fort Klamath in 1873 for the Canby massacre in the Modoc war. His story was sent to the Oregonian, the Pittsburgh Leader and the New York Times.

The city now (1911) had three daily papers—the Herald, the Chronicle (started in 1910) and the Pioneer Press.

The Herald had been started in 1906 by the Cronemiller family, later of Lakeview. In 1903 Wesley O. Smith, who had come to Klamath Falls as a timberman, had bought the Republican, a weekly established April 23, 1896, by W. E. Bowdoin, formerly of the old Linkville Star. Bowdoin was in the commercial printing business and had some of the old equipment of the Star, which he used to print the new paper. In July, 1898, Milan A. Loosley, who had been a partner for a year, purchased Bowdoin's interest. He sold soon after ward to the Klamath Republican Publishing Company, under the management of Charles L. Roberts. The Republican, conservative in policies, appealed to the business element and was well patronized in competition with J. Scott Taylor's Express.

The next change in the Republican brought W. Huse & Sons across the mountains from Ashland to conduct the paper. They carried on for four years, selling to Wesley O. Smith April 23, 1903. They announced simply and frankly in that issue of their paper that "He offered us our price and we accepted."

Smith issued his first paper April 30, 1903. Not a newspaper man, he had been persuaded by J. Wesley Hamaker, an attorney, seeking election to the senate, to take over the Republican with Hamaker's backing and support him for the office. Smith and Ha maker both were Republicans. When Hamaker was defeated, he lost interest in journalism and sold the paper to Smith, who proceeded