Pennington County Courant

	This chapter is from "Eastern Pennington County Memories", published by 
	The American Legion Auxilliary, Carrol McDonald Unit, Wall, South Dakota 
	And is uploaded with their kind permission. Page 26

	Scan, OCR and editing by Maurice Krueger, mkrueger@iw.net, 1999. 

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Pennington County Courant

by R. F. Lewis

	The Pennington County Courant has perhaps two distinctions.

	The Courant is one of two papers in the Nation with this name - 
the Hartford Courant of Hartford, Connecticut; and the Pennington 
County Courant of Wall.

	Secondly, the present owner and publisher is the oldest 
continuous business operator in Wall -All other businesses in Wall have 
changed hands or management, retired or are new businesses. (Dr. G. W. 
Mills might be an exception -- he has been wanting to retire but the 
public won't let him.)

	Another rather unusual fact is that the Courant has had only two 
publishers in its 58 years of existence.

	E. S. Johnston established the Courant at Quinn in 1907 when it 
was then called the Quinn Courant. In 1926, the paper was moved to Wall 
and named the Eastern Pennington County Courant, and later changed to 
Pennington County Courant. The present owner, R. F. Lewis, bought the 
Courant in 1929.

	It was in 1883 when Johnston entered the newspaper field as owner 
of the Mt. Vernon Gazette. After the big Mt. Vernon fire, April 4, 1889 
which destroyed his plant, Johnston moved his paper to Mitchell and 
founded the first paper in that town, the Mitchell Gazette. This he 
sold in 1903, and the next three years the following papers were 
started by Mr. Johnston and later sold: Ethan Enterprize in 1905; 
Fulton Advocate in 1905; the Murdo Messenger in 1906 and sold the same 
year to E. L. Senn; and the Stamford Standard in 1906.

	He and his family moved to Quinn in 1907 when he started the 
Quinn Courant; and lived there except for a short time when he moved to 
Rapid City so his children could attend high school, until he came to 
Wall in 1926.

	His nine children were Tom, George, Lillian (Mrs. R. D. 
Holdridge), Ralph, Everette, Helen (Mrs. L. L. Ladd), Frank, Philip and 
Marian.

	Edward Smith Johnston (E. S. J.) was 80 years old when he sold 
his handset paper to R. F. Lewis. He and his wife with the assistance 
of his grandson, Edward, did all of the work of printing the paper 
until the change of ownership. Other than a publisher, Johnston was a 
county judge, a lawyer and a United States Land Commissioner.

	The present owner of the Wall paper had his father-in-law, Tom 
Bliss, managing the paper for several of the earlier years while he 
taught school here, at Wasta and Owanka. But he or his wife, Eleanor, 
were never far enough away not to have had their hand in editing the 
1,872 issues of the Courant during the past 36 years.

	The town of Wall was first served by the Wall Record. This paper 
had several owners before it was sold to Goodwin Hansen in 1923 and 
moved to Wasta. After a few issues published in Wasta, the paper was 
discontinued and Wall was without a paper for a couple of years. 
Efforts of I. D. Winter in selling subscriptions to the Courant was the 
leading factor in getting E. S. Johnston to move to Wall. This was in 
the month of August, and if your subscription expiration date is August 
it may well be that you are one of these original subscribers.

	The Courant now has equipment equal to any small weekly newspaper 
plant in the state -- a three-magazine linotype, two newspaper presses, 
a Little Giant automatic job press, a small hand fed press, a 30" paper 
cutter, a caster, mat, scortcher, stero saw and router, plus fifty 
faces of type. The Courant now employs a full time, experienced press 
man along with the owner, who sits around with his feet on the desk.

[Photo - First printing shop in Wall in what is now the basement of 
Wall Café. One man is Charlie Burnett, others unknown.]

[Photo - Present Pennington County Courant Print Shop]

[Photo - Blizzard in 1949]

[Photo - Kenneth Lewis at the linotype]