Historic Hood River
The Hood River Glacier Office
Notes
Here’s Samuel Blythe, editor of the Hood River Glacier, arriving at his office. I believe it was on the north side of Oak Street just east of Fourth. Next door is a dry goods store which advertises R&G Corsets and “the Last Day of Our Special Shirt Sale!”. I’ll bet they put an ad in the Glacier.
This image gives me a chance to share some news that would have made Mr. Blythe very proud. The Oregon Digital Newspaper Program has ranked the Hood River Glacier its #1 choice this year in a program funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. What this means is that all the issues of the Glacier from Volume 1 #1 (in 1889) through 1922 will be digitized and made searchable. Not only will appear in the Historic Oregon Newspapers website, but they will be part of the Library of Congress’ Chronicling America site. It will take a few months for this all to happen, but when it’s done we’ll all have access to a wealth of historic information. I’ll have to make my “Mystery Mondays” challenges harder.
Buzzy Nielson at the Hood River County Library has been spearheading an effort with the History Museum and several other Hood River and Wasco County cultural institutions to digitize all of our historic local newspapers. A previous grant from Google is digitizing the Dalles Chronicle from 1889-1900 and the Maupin Times from 1914-1930. The coalition is now working to piece together funding to digitize the Hood River News from 1909-1922, as well as the Bonneville Dam Chronicle (1934-1939), the Hood River Glacier (1923-1933) and the Hood River County Sun (1936-1952). All this printed history will make a wonderful complement to the photographic history we’ve been able to share with you.
There is a fascinating technical and legal back story behind this. The University of Oregon has special equipment and considerable expertise which allows scanning directly from microfilm negatives which were previously created from decaying stacks of newsprint. They apply OCR (optical character recognition) techniques to the scans to make the scans searchable by text, which greatly increases the value to researchers.
The legal back story relates to our very complicated copyright laws. All newspapers published in the US prior to January 1, 1923 are in the public domain, but trying to figure out if later issues are public or copyright protected is a tremendously complex task (legal summary). Because of these complexities many projects stop at 1922, leaving an unfortunate hole in our accessible history. Fortunately Buzzy is digging a bit deeper with orphaned or non-renewed copyrights on some of our more recent local historic newspapers.
l.e.
Thank you to Buzzy and everyone else who helps make these older newspapers accessible to all of us. I can waste days reading that stuff. Right now I am reading a booklet of early Goldendale Sentinel news clippings. I am up to December of 1933 when severe flooding of local rivers takes place and a fossilized Redwood tree is found along the Klickitat River.
There is a wealth of information in those old newspapers useful for solving mysteries.
l.e.
Do you think that might be Herman Kresse driving the carriage?
nlc
What do you think the tied stacks are on the right side of the Glacier building?
Julie Moe
Wow,since I am the great grand daughter of A.D. Moe, the Glaciers owner from 1905-33, I am beyond thrilled. Thank you for posting this info. My great uncles owned the newspapers in Mosier,Dufur and The Dalles, do you know if the first 2 will be available?
Scott Cook
Great new Arthur…I appreciate you bringing the news to all our attentions!! The digitization and searchability of the Oregonian’s archive has untangled many-a Gorge history mystery for me….and I’m sure the HR Glacier and the Chronicle ill only improve the available insights. Bravo Buzzy!!
Scott Cook
And l.e….I’ve read the same Sentinel booklet you have…and that petrified tree stump that was unearthed in 1938 along the old Haul Road is still there!! Look for my pix of it on GoogEarth, just upstream from the old Klickitat Mill Site, along the Haul Rd at a big bend on the Klick.
cheers, scott
Arthur
My best guess is that the tied bundles are cedar shakes, though they seem awfully uniform. Here’s a closeup: http://flic.kr/p/husxhg
Julie, you should contact Buzzy at the library. He can check who has archives of which newspapers. Hopefully someone still has microfilm of the Mosier and Dufur papers.
Buzzy
Julie,
We don’t have plans yet for those newspapers, but I’d be happy to work on getting funding for those as well. Are you talking about the Mosier Bulletin and the Dufur Dispatch? The Bulletin didn’t run for very long, it looks like, 1909-1917. Since all those dates are pre-1923, and there aren’t that many issues, it would be relatively little to digitize. The Hood River Library actually has some of the Mosier Bulletin in print, although they’re in pretty terrible shape. It looks like the Dufur Dispatch ran from 1892-1941. The University of Oregon has microfilm copies of both titles. Here are the links.
Mosier Bulletin: http://janus.uoregon.edu/record=b2782548~S8
Dufur Dispatch: http://janus.uoregon.edu/record=b2722746~S8
Bill Seaton
Buzzy,
Does the University of Oregon also have microfilm copies of the Hood River papers?
Julie Moe
Thank you Buzzy. The only name of the three newspapers I remember, is the Mosier Bulletin, I have Roger Moe’s desk from it. Do you know if my grandparents donated copies of The Glacier or others, when they were on the Historical or Pioneer groups? My copies of 1929-30,are in great condition, if yours are not.
Buzzy
Bill – Yes, they do, as do we. We have the entire run of the Hood River Glacier and Hood River News in microfilm. We’re also purchasing the Bonneville Dam Chronicle, Mosier Bulletin, and Hood River County (Daily) Sun in microfilm. You’re welcome to look at them anytime. We recently got a new microfilm reader allows you to save pages of interest to a USB drive.
Julie – I’m not sure if anyone donated our copies of the Glacier. I assume that they were collected by the library itself (with earlier ones perhaps being donated when the library opened). Our copies are bound into years, although some of the binding has come loose due to the condition of the papers. They don’t have any notations about a donor in them. We’re actually moving them out of public access soon, given their condition. You might check with Connie at the Museum, though. Perhaps your grandparents donated the papers to them?
l.e.
Scott…..after listening to your talk at the HR Library about 15 Mile Creek and praising the advantages of Google Earth, I came home and downloaded it.
So yes….I just looked at your photo. The rest of my family seems to know all about this petrified tree, but I had to read an old newspaper to find out about it.
l.e.
Arthur…..I am no longer receiving the COMMENT RSS feed. I have tried renewing it but nothing comes through.
Any suggestions?
Jeffrey Bryant
Congratulations on the digital effort. I look forward to extracting vital information on Hood River citizens for my Hood River Genealogy database (possibly with help from others) and to share on http://www.Findagrave.com. If anyone wants a copy of my database, you can send me an e-mail at bryajw@bridgemail.com. (I’ve provided an earlier copy to the Hood River History Museum, but continue to make additions).
Jeffrey Bryant
The Hood River Glacier, June 30, 1910
THE GLACIER MOVES
Today will be moving day for The Glacier. The office will be moved bodily into the north room of the new First National Bank building on Third street. Every thing will be taken along, from the editorial sanctum where the typewriter clicks, to "the devil’s punch bowl," in which the type is washed. We are glad to be moving into quarters which will mean more room and more convenience. Increase of business, both in the newspaper and job printing departments, makes it necessary to change and when we are located in the new building, we will be equipped and able to do more and better work than ever.
The new Glacier office, which will be the first room of the new bank building to be occupied, will allow us to have practically the whole newspaper and printing plant on one floor and the basement will be used for storage. The entire front is glass, giving abundant light, and a high ceiling allows the light to get to the back of the room. The location is very near the business center of the town, which will make it much more convenient for the patrons of the office.
At the time we will move considerable new equipment will be installed which will make for better and faster work. The principal addition to the plant will be a new cylinder press for printing the newspaper and for doing fine job work. This one addition adds greatly to the value of the plant and will greatly simplify the task of getting out the paper. The circulation of the Glacier has steadily increased during the past year and the increased size of the paper has almost doubled the work of getting it out. A year ago the paper was only eight pages, but increase in advertising and the amount of news matter handled has made ten and twelve page editions necessary. The new press is much faster than the old one, and will make it possible to get the paper off much more quickly and eliminate the necessity of printing some of the pages several days ahead of publication day. We also expect to be able to get much better printing done on the new press so that with the new type the paper will be cleaner and easier to read.
Not only is the new press a most valuable addition in connection with the newspaper work, but it will enable the job printing department to do extra fine work on anything from letter heads to large posters which should be printed on a cylinder press. The new press is especially adapted to job printing and as an illustration of what it will enable us to do, the apple wrappers for the Apple Growers Union will be printed in Hood River. This is a very large job and it is the first time that home industry has been able to handle the work of printing the label of the Hood River Apple Grower’s Union on the fruit wrappers. There will be several millions of the wrappers to be printed and one car load of the paper to be used on the job has been stored in the basement of our new quarters for over a week and just as soon as we are settled the big job will be commenced.
The Glacier has been printing the news of the Hood River valley for more than 21 years and it will be our endeavor, with better equipment, to cover the local field even more thoroughly than we have in the past. We invite your co-operation in helping us to publish the best newspaper in Hood River devoted to the best interests of Hood River. We will be glad to receive a call from all of our friends and will take a pride in showing them how we do "better printing." We heartily thank all our friends who have by their patronage made our moving and enlargement necessary and we will do our utmost to deserve in the future the support which we have been accorded heretofore.
http://oregonnews.uoregon.edu/lccn/sn97071110/1910-06-30/ed-1/seq-2/