Oregon Scout. He sold the paper March 1, 1925, to George Huntington Currey, son of the founder of the Observer, who changed the name to the La Grande District News. Binford is now a Portland attorney. George Huntington Currey was at the time publishing the Arlington Bulletin, the Boardman Mirror, and the Stanfield Standard. After a short interval, during which his uncle, Fred B. Currey, conducted the News, George Huntington Currey remained with the News until September 1931, when the Curreys sold to the Observer and retired from the newspaper field. Olive M. Currey (Mrs. George Huntington) under this regime became La Grande's first full-fledged woman newspaper editor.
In 1932 C. J. Shorb, who had been a western Oregon publisher, installed a new plant in the District News building and established the weekly Eastern Oregon Review, published Fridays, from an office "next to police station," as it is announced in the masthead.
P. R. Finlay, publisher of the Observer, died February 6, 1932, and La Grande's daily, one of the largest and most successful in Oregon outside of Portland, was published and managed by his son, Harold M. Finlay, until 1938.
Harvey Bowen is the present (1939) editor-manager. Mr. Finlay is conducting the La Grande radio station.
The La Grande Tribune, a weekly, started November 6, 1931, by R. C. Cooke and M. M. Arant, was published for a few issues.
BAKER
The present Baker Democrat is the direct continuation of the old Bedrock Democrat, Baker's first newspaper, founded in 1870 by L. L. McArthur, a former Confederate army officer, and M. H. Abbott, formerly of Albany, whose name occurs frequently in the annals of the old Oregon journalism. When he and Abbott started the Democrat, McArthur was county judge. He later became circuit judge, and his activities soon carried him entirely away from journalism and into a successful bar-and-bench career. But, as co-founder of the Bedrock Democrat, his niche in Oregon journalism is permanent.
This old paper, one of the oldest in eastern Oregon, told the story of a pictureque community—of a mining boom that flourished and failed; of the building of two railroads; of the burning of a wooden jail from which four trapped victims mainly sought escape while crowds stood helpless outside; of the hold-up of the Sumpter stage-coach, the mining country's first and only big bullion robbery. Its files are full of history.
