Page:History of Oregon Newspapers.pdf/442

Rh time it was claiming 400 circulation. One day in 1917, however, the paper failed to answer the bell and has been "out" ever since.

Still a fourth paper, the Bay City Chronicle, served this small field for a time. It was launched September 7, 1923, by H. W. Long, but it failed to last through 1924.

Wheeler.—Wheeler, founded on lumber development, is not an old town, and its journalism history is short. The Reporter, founded in 1914, ran until March 1934, when it fell a victim to the depression. Probably the best known editor of the Reporter was G. B. Nunn, who took hold in 1919 and continued through to 1928. After a hiatus of three years, during which the paper was conducted by A. M. Byrd, also of Garibaldi, with Claire Warner Churchill, prominent Oregon writer, as local reporter, Mr. Nunn returned to the pa per in 1931, after a short period in which A. N. Merrill was publisher, continuing to the end.

Mr. Nunn, a Missourian, educated in old Dallas College, interspersed some newspaper work with timber-cruising and railroad-surveying. He worked on the Tillamook branch of the Southern Pacific.

Some of the difficulty in compiling the history of Oregon news papers is explained in a paragraph out of a recent letter from Mr. Nunn:

Old files of the Reporter were burned by a man who when no one was rented part of the building. It was done looking, not with intent to do damage, but just to be doing something, or to start a fire in the back yard to burn up some trash.

Hood River.—The first paper in Hood River county was not printed in the county for three months after its establishment. This was the Hood River Glacier, started in June 1889 by George T. Prather, postmaster. John H. Cradlebaugh, Oregon newspaper man and poet, was the first editor. He was living in The Dalles, where he was publishing the Wasco Sun, and since Mr. Prather had no plant Mr. Cradlebaugh arranged to use the Sun's plant for the time.

At the end of three months Mr. Prather turned the paper over to Mr. Cradlebaugh, who bought a plant and moved to Hood River. The first home of the Glacier also housed the editor and his family, who lived behind the printing office. The building still stands, though in a new location.

The name Glacier, odd for a newspaper, which ordinarily prides itself more or less on speed, came as a momentary inspiration to Mr. Cradlebaugh. (166). He and Prather had been discussing a name