torian. The same paper, the Chief, a weekly publication, issued Fridays, has been going along since 1891, without interruption and, apparently, without even a change of publication day. So far as records indicate, it was the town's first newspaper. Sometimes the paper has announced itself Republican, but usually it has not played the political game very hard.
The founder, E. C. Blackford, continued in charge from 1891 to 1909, when he sold to George B. and Nora H. Conyers. They continued as owners and publishers until 1917, when W. G. Baylis took hold. In 1920 Mrs. Minnie Goodenough Hyde became editor for Mr. Baylis, who sold in 1921 to S. F. Scibird, Mrs. Hyde remaining as editor. In 1922 Earle Richardson, recently from the Oregonian, and W. Arthur Steele, who had taught school and whose newspaper experience ran all the way from carrying the Lewiston (Idaho) Tribune to reporting, first on the Tribune and then on the Chicago Journal, bought the paper. The next year when Earle Richardson, after a rapid glance at the Elgin Recorder, decided he wanted to buy it, Steele bought Richardson's interest in the Chief and since has been running it alone.
Steele, who is a native of Idaho, spent a year during the war training rookies at Camp Grant. He is active in public service, having served as mayor of Clatskanie, lieutenant governor of the seventh division of the Pacific Northwest district of the Kiwanis, director of the state chamber of commerce, and district vice-president of the Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association.
CROOK
Prineville.—Prineville and Crook county's first newspaper, the Ochoco Pioneer, 7-col. folio, independent in politics, was started in the fall of 1880 by John E. Jeffrey. It lasted only a few months, dying in the business depression, and in the next year Dillard & Co., the same H. A. Dillard who pioneered journalism in Harney county with the Harney Valley Items in 1887, launched the Prineville News as an independent paper with Republican leanings. Horace Dillard took in D. W. Aldridge as a partner, and two years later Aldridge became editor and publisher. The paper suffered a $1500 fire November 11, 1883. The Aldridges, D. W. and E. H., conducted the paper until 1893. In the summer of 1894, with Fred E. Wilmarth as editor and publisher, the News was absorbed by the Ochoco Review, a publication started in Prineville in June 1885, by Douthit & Barnes. The News had been independent, and the Review Democratic. When the papers combined. J. N. Williamson, editor of the News, who later was to be a member of congress from Oregon, was made manager of the combined papers; L. N. Liggett soon succeeded
