by Lisa Robinson
In celebration of the Santa Cruz Mountain Bulletin‘s tenth anniversary, let us continue our look back at some of the other newspapers that have, in the past, reported on local Valley news. After the death of the Mountain Echo newspaper, it would be over a decade before another was born. In 1932, Alvah Root Mckinney, publisher, editor, printer, and pressman, who went by the name Mac, founded a “great evening luminary” the Valley Echo – Published in the valley of the San Lorenzo among the Redwoods. Mac was a seasoned printer, having worked for the Santa Cruz News. His new paper was printed in Boulder Creek on a hand-fed two-revolution Campbell printing press. The press was described as having more “temperamental notions than a movie star.” “It groaned and grunted, and balked and stuttered …” But Mac was its master. There were steps on the press to give the pressman extra height to feed the paper. Mac however was tall, according to reports, seven feet tall, and he could stand “flat-footed” on the floor. “He would pick up two seven-column forms, one under each arm, load up the old Campbell, say some mystic words under his breath and the old Campbell would walk just like nobody’s business.” The paper was short-lived and around sixteen months later Mac printed his final edition. In 1938, he founded the Pacific Democrat but shortly thereafter his Mission Street establishment and all of the equipment was destroyed by fire. He eventually settled in Scotts Valley where until his death in 1953, he published a Scotts Valley community newspaper. In 1937, the San Lorenzo Valley Journal was established. This weekly “folksy” newspaper was printed in Boulder Creek, and edited and published by former San Francisco newspaperman, Reed Hayes. It ran for six years, changing its name to the Santa Cruz County Journal in 1943, shortly after which, citing the challenging wartime business environment, Hayes took his equipment to Vallejo to start a new paper under the name Vallejo Standard. In 1945, Roland Pori and then his brother Carlo published the San Lorenzo Valley Press; it was however printed in Santa Cruz. In 1946, it was acquired by Albert Branson who continued its publication until 1949. It was then acquired by Everett Holman who changed the publication name to the San Lorenzo Valley Sun and sold it in 1950 to John Pletchet who continued publication until his retirement in 1957. Next edition we will share the story of Brookdale’s Penny Press “cantankerous” editor Thomas McHugh – “Adjectives were made for him.”
