The Hood River Glacier, Hood River, OR., June 2, 1933, page 1
GLACIER HAS A BIRTHDAY
Publication Is Started By George T. Prather
NAME CHOICE UNIQUE
A.D. Moe, For Many Years Publisher, and Mrs. Moe Married on Day First Hood
River Paper Issued
The Hood River Glacier has a birthday this week.
The pioneer Hood River Valley newspaper is 45 years old.
The first issue was published in The Dalles on June 6, 1888. Geo. T. Prather,
who now resides on the West Side, established the paper.
Mr. Prather was in doubt as to what the name of the new
publication should be. One afternoon late a group of men were discussing
the christening of the young newspaper at the livery barn of the late C.R.
Bone and the late E.S. Olinger. Some one of arrived from the highlands of
the north side of Mount Hood, where a crew of Chinamen were engaged in building
a road to Cloud Cap Inn, conceived and built by the Ladd family of Portland.
The new arrival greeted the party with the news:
"The Chinks have reached the Glacier," and in that moment
was the new paper given its name.
"Call it the Glacier," someone shouted, and Mr. Prather
accepted it.
Mr. Prather soon after the founding of the paper turned
it over to the late John H. Cradlebaugh, one of Oregon's most distant gifted
newspaper men and a poet worthy to be read by modern day Oregonians. The
latter secured equipment and established a plant here. The late S.F. Blythe,
father of E.N. Blythe, now publisher and editor of the Clark County Sun at
Vancouver, Wash., because of ill health, came here from Portland, where he
held records as a printer. He worked for Mr. Cradlebaugh, and later bought
the paper.
Mr. Blythe sold the paper, in 1904, to A.D. Moe, former
publisher of South St. Paul, Minn., and Grand Forks, N.D. An interesting
coincidence is that the Glacier's birthday and the wedding anniversary of
Mr. and Mrs. Moe fall on the same day. They were married in Wisconsin, where
Mr. Moe was employed as a printer, on the date the first Glacier was issued.
Mrs. Moe's maiden name was Miss Matilda Walther.
Mr. Moe remained active in the affairs of the paper until
two years ago when he turned it over to his sons, Roger W. and Mark E. Moe.
Joe D. Thomison, who recently returned to the Glacier
as editor, was formerly associated with the paper for 19 years, having started
his first work on New Year's Day, 1911.
Except for the Mt. Hood hotel the Glacier is the oldest
business institution in Hood River. The Glacier has long maintained friendly
relations with the Paris Fair, oldest clothing store, and Perigo & Son,
oldest grocery store. The only pioneer left among physicians is a Dr. H.L.
Dumble.
The pioneer newspaper witnessed the rapid development
attendant on the introduction of the fruit industry. Those at the helm today
predict a material upward trend in the not distant future for all of the
Pacific northwest.
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© Jeffrey L. Elmer