Page:History of Oregon Newspapers.pdf/453

444 A weekly, the Deschutes County Advertiser, is now (1939) edited by Harriet A. Pierce.

Laidlaw (Tumalo).–When Bend was a struggling little community of a few hundreds, with its future a matter of conjecture, a rival town sprang up within a few miles. This was christened Laidlaw by W. A. Laidlaw of Portland, who, like A. M. Drake, founder of Bend, had the vision to see a future for the Deschutes valley. Both recognized the vital necessity of railroad communication. Drake pinned his faith to a north-and-south line down the Deschutes valley, and Laidlaw believed his town on the logical route for the extension of the Corvallis & Eastern railroad over Hogg pass into central Oregon and on east. This particular railroad, not unconnected with the newspaper history of Corvallis, thus had its part in the establishment of a newspaper in the Deschutes region. The townsite of Laidlaw was filed in 1904, shortly after Drake had started laying out the townsite of Bend, and the next year Laidlaw had a newspaper, the Chronicle, a Friday weekly edited and published by A. P. Donohue. The Bend Bulletin had been established in 1903. In about two years W. P. Myers was publishing the Chronicle, a four-page paper, for which he was charging $1.50 a year and claiming 400 subscribers. Both Bend and Laidlaw had the ag. cultural possibilities; but Bend soon had the industries and the railroad, together with a most beautiful natural setting, while the Corvallis & Eastern development, the hope of Laidlaw, became a lost cause for another Oregon community. The paper was suspended by H. H. and C. L. Palmer in 1911.

Redmond.–Redmond is in Deschutes county; but, as Ripley perhaps would put it, Redmond's first newspaper never was published in Deschutes county at all. It was launched in 1909, while Redmond was stil in Crook county, and before Deschutes county was carved out of Crook the pioneer paper, known as the Oregon Hub, had disappeared. Its editor-publisher was W. C. Walker, and he undertook publication of his little four-page six-column Thursday weekly at a time when Redmond had a mere 150 population. The little farming center grew, and he kept going until 1915, when he suspended publication.

Meanwhile two other papers had been launched, the Spokesman and the Enterprise. The Spokesman was started in June 1910 by H. H. and C. L. Palmer, who continued until 1917, when they sold to M. W. Pettigrew. Meanwhile they had been running an eight-page five-column paper, the politics of which they changed from Republican to independent in 1914.

The Enterprise was the undertaking of a rising young publisher named Douglas Mullarky, 13 years old when he launched it in 1913. He was then just breaking into the high school; but his publication wasn't a high school paper. It was a regular community newspaper,