Hoquiam town grew with such speed that those who called Hoquiam their home and those who resided in the surrounding areas experienced a large number of newspapers and other published works that tackled varying degrees of local, state and national concerns. It is said that you can gauge a town’s maturity based on the news printed on its papers and mature Hoquiam did become.

Hoquiam town was such a community with a menagerie of newspapers and gazettes established during the latter half of the nineteenth century and the earlier part of the twentieth century. Even before the start of the nineteen hundreds there were already about twenty publications in the Grays Harbor area. These newspapers especially during the time from the 1900′s up to the 1930′s were offering a wide gamut of information that touched on political, ethnic, ideological, and other special interest that catered to the needs of both residents and non-residents to Hoquiam and the general Grays Harbor area. The total may have been more than 200 newspapers at their peak.

Examples of these publications were the Grays Harbor Gazette, Hoquiam American, the Gant’s Sawyer and the Grays Harbor Washingtonian that came about in the latter years of the 1800′s and had a large following and was well received as a reliable newspaper of that time.

Congressman Albert Johnson was one of the first editors of the Grays Harbor Washingtonian and his fiery editorials gave Hoquiam’s residents and large migrant labor force a lot to think and contemplate on. Mister Johnson’s stand on issues such as organized labor and immigrant status bordered on mistrust and hatred while at the same time the same editor championed women’s rights to suffrage.

Newspapers such as the Washingtonian and many others like it were basically propaganda pieces of various interest groups involved in the Hoquiam area and its major industry during that time which was lumber. The same editor of the Washingtonian, Congressman Albert Johnson also published the Home Defender which blatantly lambasted labor activism and immigrant workers.

The spread of hostile statements and accusations of bad faith and ill intent hounded immigrants and lumber workers through the editorials of these newspapers and these sentiments were pounded and driven into the psyche of the community, in some instances effectively changing public opinion regarding some very important issues.

These newspapers made Hoquiam’s society richer and more well-informed most of the time and they definitely provided a difference in opinions and well-versed propaganda, contributing to the pulse of Hoquiam’s various stakeholders in labor, ethnic, political and religious divides.

The Washingtonian had a run from 1903 to 1951 as a daily newspaper and into a weekly. The last edition of this very opinionated publication was printed in 1957. The newspapers of Hoquiam town and the surrounding Grays Harbor area were a mixture of well founded and some well-meaning organizations and individuals who believed in something that was for them during the different time periods and upheavals were worth writing about and bringing into the awareness of people who were directly or indirectly affected by those events and policies.

The people of Hoquiam always valued their rights to expression and information like any other American citizen and during the earlier part of the 19th century Hoquiam and the Grays Harbor area was experiencing its own share of controversial events that affected a large number of its residents and non-residents who were part of its industry and indirectly also part of the community. The various papers served their purposes well, feeding information whether in an objective manner or not, a prime example of which was the Washingtonian still contributed to how the people perceived the truth about their community.

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