Lynda Demsher
As It Was ContributorLynda Demsher has been editor of a small-town weekly newspaper, a radio reporter, a daily newspaper reporter and columnist for the Redding Record Searchlight, Redding California. During the 1990s and early 2000s she taught high school English in Redding. She lived in Alturas, California for 15 years where she ran the Adult Education program for the Modoc Joint Union High School District until her retirement. She has been an occasional contributor to the Modoc Record, and a volunteer for Modoc's High Plateau Humane Society and the Friends of the Modoc National Wildlife Refuge, among other non-profit organizations in that small community needing someone to do public relations, ads, marketing, grant writing and photography. She moved to Grants Pass in early 2015 to be closer to family and the coast, where she and her husband keep a fishing boat ready for the salmon run.
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An Alturas doctor who shot up a saloon in the northeastern California town ended up shooting the man who spared his life. Around 10 o’clock on a Sunday in…
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An ordained Methodist missionary who went among the Smith River Indians to save souls soon became as interested in saving their culture.The missionary,…
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A British diplomat liked the fishing on the Rogue River so much he decided to build his own lodge along its banks. His Britannic Majesty’s consul to…
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Cannery fish wars came to a head in August 1916 with a fight in the middle of the Rogue River.It began when Claud Bardon, a fisherman for the Seaborg…
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White supremacy had an outspoken advocate in backwater Grants Pass, Ore., between 1924 and 1927 in the form of a short-lived newspaper published by J.J.…
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An “electrical butcher” was killing people in Grants Pass in 1924, according to the short-lived Southern Oregon Spokesman newspaper. In the span of two…
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Two Kerby, Ore., high school teachers learned the hard way one Saturday night in June 1925 that Prohibition was strictly enforced.Their career-ending…
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In 1911, six dollars in silver wasn’t something anyone would want to lose. However, a man coming out of a business on Main Street in Cottage Grove, Ore.,…
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Two young men learned in 1911 that easy money can result in early arrest.The men, Edward Jurgins, 20, and Fred Foster, 26, had decided there were better…
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Lectures were an early form of entertainment in America and charismatic speakers sometimes took advantage of people’s credulity. The Cottage Grove…
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A failed Oregon homesteader in the early 1900s, Samuel H. Boardman, would become known as the father of the state’s park system.Boardman came West as a…
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Fire raged through the wooden Knights of Pythias Hall in Dunsmuir, Calif., in 1924, and spread through much of the town in what became known as “The Big…