Christmas group was trapped. The Examiner got out an extra December 27. Silver Lake is nearly a hundred miles from Lakeview, and winter communication then was not what it is now. The Examiner, too, was a weekly paper. The Roseburg Review's head on the Silver Lake Story was "An Awful Holocaust."
Another interesting Lakeview paper was the Lake County Rustler, launched in 1895 as a Thursday weekly supporting the People's party. J. C. Oliver was editor and publisher. After several changes of ownership and a change of name to the Herald, in 1902, it was purchased from William Wagner, editor and publisher, in 1911 and merged with the Examiner under the older paper's name.
The History of Central Oregon (1905) tells[1] of a race of publishers for the rich land-notice business around Silver Lake, in which one paper managed to get born just one day ahead of another. William Holden, publisher of the Review at Prineville, associated himself with W. A. Bell, U. S. commissioner at Prineville, and started for Silver Lake with a printing plant. Bailey & Black of the Crook County Journal, Prineville, got a printing plant and started at the same time. L. N. Kelsay bought the Shaniko Leader from Holder and also started for Silver Lake, not knowing about the others. The three plants arrived at their destination almost at the same time. Bailey & Black and Kelsay consolidated their plants and began publication of the Central Oregonian, March 5, 1903, under the firm name of Bailey & Kelsay. The next day (March 6) Holder and Bell's plant delivered the first issue of the Silver Lake Bulletin, with L. N. Liggett editor and manager. It ran for 38 issues and in November was absorbed by the Central Oregonian. Most of the timber around the town had been thrown into a federal forest reserve, one of the earliest under the Roosevelt-Pinchot conservation policy.
The great fire of May 22, 1900, when the greater part of the Lakeview district, including the buildings and much of the equipment of both papers, was destroyed, gave the newspapers an opportunity for cooperation in the issuance of extras giving details of the disaster. Apparently in those days being a day or two late with an extra was a matter of no great worry. The Examiner, with what it was able to save out of the fire, got out a typographically nondescript extra the next day, then lent its equipment to the harder-hit Rustler to get out its extra a day or two later. The Rustler's expression of gratitude was classic. "We cannot," said the Rustler, "express our gratitude here as we feel it. It is the kind of a favor that touches the soul deeper than words or ordinary favors. What ever we may do in the future, run a newspaper, ranch, or saw wood, this act will be cherished as the one pleasant memory of the Lakeview fire."
A few months after the fire both papers enlarged, the Examiner
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