While cruising around the internet the other day, I spotted a timely story that made me stop and read. The headline on the Associated Press item stated “Man saves California’s oldest weekly from closure.” The topic of newspapers shutting down their presses has become a too-regular story today. The Dickinson Press recently announced they’d forego their daily schedule and print as a weekly. Three other official county papers announced they would close their doors: Adams County Record, the Dunn County Herald, and The Herald in New England.
The California story is unusual in the fact that Carl Butz, a retired and recently widowed 71 year old man, decided to buy the Mountain Messenger in Downieville when the present owner wanted to retire. Traveling did not appeal to him in retirement, so he decided to fill his days running a weekly paper. Said to be California’s oldest newspaper, one in which Mark Twain wrote a few articles, its future is uncertain. I mean how long will a 71 year old man be willing to put in the hours and energy to succeed?
I think of the wealth of stories that have appeared in ink since the Mountain Messenger’s presses started printing. Whether or not they are archived somewhere isn’t known, but fortunately for us in North Dakota most of ours are. I’ve spent many an hour in the archive library of North Dakota’s State Historical Society in the Heritage Center reading microfilmed papers from the early days. Some call newspapers the first rough draft of history, and those old stories give lots of reading pleasure to a frontier history lover like me.
Of course, being a Sheldonite, I’ve concentrated on those issues which began to appear in The Enterprise in 1885. In 1905 it became known as the Sheldon Progress and was published until 1942. That first year of publication draws me back occasionally to read those stories from which I can form a mental picture almost good as a movie: “Prairie schooners are passing westward almost every day.” and “Train loads of emigrants and emigrant movables continue to pass west.”
One day in March of 1885, the editor of The Enterprise looked out of his window and noticed two ladies walking in the muddy street. He chided the city council, “We noticed two ladies of our city trying to get from main street to the depot. We need some cross walks, and The Enterprise will continue to say so until they are built. To what better use can you put the liquor license money now in the treasury?”
It took until June, 1915, before hitching posts were removed from main street. Growing numbers of automobiles needed parking space. Hitching posts had outlived their usefulness. But then cars parking in those spaces caused a different problem: “One or two of the merchants have asked The Progress to utter a protest in regard to letting their cars stand there. It hinders the farmers, especially the ladies, from driving up in front of these stores and leaving their produce.”
At one time, The Progress didn’t like to see recreational activity on any given Sunday. In June, 1885 we read “Some of our young gents, not having the fear of their creator before their eyes, indulged in a match game of baseball last Sunday. Don’t do so anymore, boys.” A couple weeks earlier this appeared, “a number of our towns people had good luck last Saturday fishing in the Maple River. Those who went out to the river Sunday on the same errand came home empty-handed. Fish in the rivers of Dakota don’t bite on the Sabbath day.”
Reading these old newspapers rewards the lover of history with a clearer picture of the “good old days.”
No comments:
Post a Comment