About Yukon Valley news. [volume] (Tanana, Alaska) 1910-1913
Tanana, Alaska (1910-1913)

Yukon Valley news

The Yukon Valley News was started on August 3, 1904, in the town of Rampart by Samuel E. Heeter and Sam Callahan. In Bent Pins to Chains: Alaska and Its Newspapers (2006), Evangeline Atwood and Lew Williams Jr. write that Heeter and Callahan, noted entrepreneurs in town, leased a printing press from the Tanana mission and set up shop with Callahan as editor of the new paper.

The Yukon Valley News supported Judge Wickersham as territorial delegate, thereby earning the opprobrium of another Rampart newspaper, the Alaska Forum, which complained that the Yukon Valley News was an organ for Wickersham. In its October 28, 1905, issue, the Forum implied that the Yukon Valley News was beholden to Wickersham for helping Callahan secure a liquor license and accused him of illegally running a saloon out of a tent. In the final Forum issue on August 4, 1906, the editor, James Wingate, referred to the Yukon Valley News as a "cloven-footed contemporary," implying that it has devilish intentions.

By 1907, the Yukon Valley News had become a one-person production run by Callahan, and it was suspended on August 7 of that year when he quit to go prospecting. Upon his return in 1909, Callahan started it up again, basing it in Tanana this time. The new iteration only lasted for two issues before Callahan was summoned to Fairbanks for jury duty. When he returned to Tanana, he was persuaded by George M. Arbuckle to come join him at the Tanana Leader as editor,instead of trying to bring back the Yukon Valley News once again. Callahan and Arbuckle merged operations to focus on supporting one newspaper in the small town instead of trying to support two.

That didn't last long, though. Arbuckle left the Leader in 1910 and Callahan suspended it later that year. Albert Gustavus Stamm, a reporter from the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, bought the Leader in 1910, changing the paper's name back to the Yukon Valley News and starting the third iteration of the title on September 22, 1910. Callahan stayed on briefly as a printer with Stamm and then left to go prospecting again. According to Bent Pins to Chains, under Stamm, the Yukon Valley News operated a circulating library and a magazine exchange. The paper used its want ads to help people secure work and offered a refund on the advertising costs if no job developed. Stamm sold the paper in 1911 to George Hill, a veteran of the news business who had started the Weekly Fairbanks News,which eventually became the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner. The paper struggled financially, and Hill was forced to suspend publication for several months in March of 1912. In early 1913, Hill folded the paper for want of support and moved to Valdez.

Provided by: Alaska State Library Historical Collections