A Tug-of-War Over Local Pride
The South Bend Journal faced a humbling lesson in geography and maritime reality after prematurely bragging about a local shipping milestone.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
The South Bend Journal, in its laudable desire to boom South Bend, allowed itself a few weeks ago a little premature boasting over the fact that the schooner Chehalis was going to take one million feet of lumber from South Bend, a phenomenal feat she could not accomplish from Grays Harbor! The Journal should have waited until the Chehalis got out of the wilderness before whistling so loud. On leaving South Bend with her cargo last Thursday, the Chehalis ran hard and fast aground. She has twice left Grays Harbor loaded, and both times passed out without difficulty. South Bend is a good enough place, but the Journal makes a serious mistake in trying to boom it at the expense of Grays Harbor.
“The Journal should have waited until the Chehalis got out of the wilderness before whistling so loud.”
Town rivalries were the lifeblood of late 19th-century Washington, where regional newspapers functioned as the primary marketing arms for their respective real-estate speculators. This incident highlights the tension between the established deep-water access of Grays Harbor and the ambitious, but often geologically challenging, development projects in neighboring South Bend.
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