Thanks to the generosity of the Morrow County Heritage and Agricultural Museums, our website has new content for the Heppner Gazette-Times! Issues from 1987 to 2014 were recently added to our preexisting online collection of issues for this title. Since this addition coincides with the Halloween season, check out how the local community of the Heppner area has celebrated Halloween over the years.
Throughout the years the small town of Heppner has celebrated Halloween in a variety of ways. Scarecrow making contests have been enjoyed by the residents of Heppner along with hunting for the homes of scarecrows.
Heppner gazette-times. (Heppner, Or.) October 25, 2000, page 1. https://oregonnews.uoregon.edu/lccn/sn97071042/2000-10-25/ed-1/seq-1/
Take a look at the “spooktacular” carnival hosted by Heppner Elementary School almost twenty years ago!
Heppner gazette-times. (Heppner, Or.) October 27, 1999, page 1. https://oregonnews.uoregon.edu/lccn/sn97071042/1999-10-27/ed-1/seq-1/
Along with scarecrows, carnivals, and pumpkin carving, Heppner also participated in other fun Halloween activities, such as guessing the weight of a gigantic pumpkin to win it. There was also a “Guess the Ghoul!” contest where pictures of employees from local businesses dressed up in costumes were displayed in the paper for the townspeople to guess which “ghoul” belonged to which business in order to be entered to win a gift certificate.
Heppner gazette-times. (Heppner, Or.) October 29, 1997, page 1. https://oregonnews.uoregon.edu/lccn/sn97071042/1997-10-29/ed-1/seq-1/
The town of Heppner has been creative when it comes to decorating and dressing up for Halloween. To get a glimpse of even more spooky delights from Heppner, browse through other issues of the Heppner Gazette-Times found on our website. Thanks to optical character recognition, this title along with all other titles located on our website, can easily be browsed or searched using keywords. In addition to this, all of our content can be downloaded as a PDF or JPEG and saved for future reference or research.
The Morrow County Museum has partnered with the Oregon Digital Newspaper Program (ODNP) to digitize a wealth of historic newspaper content from Heppner, and these new additions provide a comprehensive view of the area’s history from a local newspaper perspective. (Please see our blog titled “Morrow County Now Represented in Historic Oregon Newspapers Online!” for an introduction to the history of Heppner.)
The following Heppner titles are currently available for viewing online, free and open to the public:
The majority of content on the Historic Oregon Newspapers website was published before 1922, due to the public domain copyright law that allows free and open use of anything published on or before Dec. 31, 1922. The new additions from The Gazette-Times and the Heppner Gazette-Times, as well as the post-1922 content from the Heppner Herald, is made possible with copyright agreements from the publishers for a Creative Commons Attribution Non-commercial license. This means that any content that you find on the site that was published after 1922 can be used for non-commercial purposes, as long as proper attribution is given to the publisher and the Historic Oregon Newspapers website. For more information on copyright and newspapers, see our blog titled “Copyright and Historic Newspapers.”
‘Tis the season for exploring Oregon’s history through newspapers! Discover these and other Oregon newspaper titles at Historic Oregon Newspapers online, using the Title page to browse, the Search page to do advanced keyword searches across the collection, and the History page to learn more about newspaper history (more essays coming soon!). Happy Holidays!
In partnership with the Morrow County Museum in Heppner, Oregon, several early newspapers from Heppner are now available for keyword searching and browsing online at Historic Oregon Newspapers!
Incorporated on Feb. 9, 1887, the town of Heppner has seen many years’ worth of historical events in the Northeastern region of Oregon. In 1885, Morrow County was created, carved from the already existing Umatilla County. In 1888, Heppner welcomed it’s first railroad line, which was a spur from the Columbia River. As more railroads and roads were added over the years, Heppner became a regional trade center. You can follow the community’s enthusiasm and the development of the railroad through these historic newspapers with a search for “railroad,” limited to Heppner titles with results listed in date order. We found the following entries, but there are over 2,000 pages of Heppner newspapers that mention railroads, so you won’t be bored!
In June of 1888, there was much anticipation for the coming railroad as a contributor to economic boom:
Heppner weekly gazette. (Heppner, Umatilla County, Or.) 1883-1890, June 14, 1888, Image 2. http://oregonnews.uoregon.edu/lccn/sn97071041/1888-06-14/ed-1/seq-2/
By late November of 1888, the railroad was complete, a cause for celebration:
Heppner weekly gazette. (Heppner, Umatilla County, Or.) 1883-1890, November 29, 1888, Image 2. http://oregonnews.uoregon.edu/lccn/sn97071041/1888-11-29/ed-1/seq-2/
As the county seat, Heppner was and still is the home of the Morrow County Courthouse. Constructed in 1903, it is one of the oldest continually used courthouses in Oregon, not to mention a fabulous example of American Renaissance architecture. That same year, a devastating flood crashed through the town killing hundreds of community members and destroying hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of property. Gruesome reports of victims and body parts being found months after the event can be seen in the Heppner Times, from which digitized issues are available from late 1903 to late 1904:
Another flood struck again in 1918, along with two fires that destroyed many buildings and homes in the community. The Heppner Herald was one of the many businesses affected by the fire of June, 1918, which apparently started in or near the Palace Hotel and spread by wind, destroying four and a half city blocks. Publisher S.A. Pattison gives his perspective in the July 5, 1918 issue of the paper, which came out a day late due to the fire:
The Heppner Hotel, built in 1920, was part of the town’s rebuilding after the several disasters, and it is one of the historic buildings still standing in Heppner today:
These clippings are just a few examples of the content that can be found in Heppner’s historic newspapers. Search or browse these titles and see what other kinds of interesting things you can find!
Thanks to the generosity of the Morrow County Heritage and Agricultural Museums, our website has new content for the Heppner Gazette-Times! Issues from 1987 to 2014 were recently added to our preexisting online collection of issues for this title. Since this addition coincides with the Halloween season, check out how the local community of the Heppner area has celebrated Halloween over the years.
