Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 4.djvu/383

Rh July 5 of the same year the Northwest was started in Port Townsend by E. S. Dyer, publisher, and John F. Damon, editor. Mr. Damon continued with the paper until it suspended, before the second volume was completed.

Rev. John F. Damon, the Congregational clergyman of Seattle, is too widely known to require extended mention here.

The Register was resuscitated late in 1860 and run a violent career for several months, and later was followed by the Message, which ran several years under different management.

In 1874 C. W. Philbrick purchased the press on which the last-named paper was printed, changed the name to Puget Sound Argus, and succeeded in placing it on a paying basis, a hitherto impossible achievement in Port Townsend. In 1877 Philbrick, after accumulating considerable property, sold the Argus to Mr. Allen Weir.

July 29, 1861, the Overland Press was started in Olympia. A short time before the pony express had been put on the route between the Missouri River and Sacramento, carrying the news and a few letters, thus placing San Francisco and New York in communication with each other in from ten to twelve days. This suggested the name of the paper. It was enabled to give a brief summary of Eastern news only three weeks old. Prior to this it had been from six weeks to three months old when it reached Olympia.

The great Civil War had broken out only a few weeks earlier and the manager of the Press of Victoria, British Columbia, with commendable business sagacity, determined to establish a paper in Olympia containing the latest war news, and have it ready to distribute at all Puget Sound ports and have a supply to distribute to its own readers in Victoria and other parts of British Colum-