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HISTORY OF OREGON NEWSPAPERS
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lengthy reasons which determined the establishment of the Post at Port Orford instead of at Ellensburg as at first contemplated." It is explained that "two papers flourish in Coos county, neither of which is published in the County Seat, and they as fully subserve their missions as local journals as if both were printed in Empire City," and it is announced that "as soon as the proper heading reaches us (which will probably be during the present week) 'Port Orford Post' will be substituted for 'Curry County Post.'" The inside headings, in fact, already were changed to "Port Orford Post" in the first issue.

The little paper in its first number devotes itself to the support of the Port Orford harbor improvement project (referred to in sev eral articles as the Harbor of Refuge) (133). An article a column long is reprinted from the Alta California of San Francisco, dated May 7, describing the harbor improvement project. The Alta recalled that in March, 1873, it had favored the development of a Harbor of Refuge and indicated Port Orford as the point "which would, by a Board of Hydrographic Engineers, be probably selected for such an improvement." The article was an enthusiastic recommendation of Port Orford for the improvement, for which, it was recited, Congress had appropriated $150,000 to be expended wherever the Board of Hydrographic Engineers might decide. The decision for Port Orford had been announced in the Alta of the previous day, in the face of requests for breakwaters from "every man that had a sawmill on the coast A similar article, no less laudatory of Port Orford as the place for the breakwater, was reprinted from the San Francisco Chronicle.

The project was delayed, however, perhaps because of strong opposition from Portland. The Portland papers argued strongly for the selection of the Columbia river. Columns of the little Post were devoted to condemnation of Portland and the Portland newspapers for what was called a "characteristic dog-in-the-manger attitude." "A narrow, selfish policy is always contemptible," said Upton, referring in particular to the Oregonian.

In any event Upton found the present too dull to hold him in Port Orford notwithstanding the promise of a rosy future, and the sale to Walter Sutton came in two years.

The little Post was conservatively neat in typography, with five narrow (112-em, slightly less than the present standard 12-em, two-inch) columns. No headline was larger than two lines of 8point bold capital letters, (smaller type than in the body of this book), and most of them in fact, were even smaller, with a good many items up to a full inch in length entirely headlines

Upton's Post was one of the newsiest-appearing small-town papers in the state. By count, page 1 contained 41 separate items, all the way from two-line personals to a column of news corres-