The date was Feb. 7, 1880 when the first issue of the Lake County Examiner made its way into the hands of Lake County residents. Being only eight years younger than the town of Lakeview, and only five years younger than Lake County itself, the Examiner has recorded the goings on of the local scene for 125 years.
The dictionary refers to the occasion as a ‘quasquicentennial,’ and it’s a time to look back at how far the paper has come and how it has grown and changed along with Lake County.
“Because we are such an isolated community, people count on us to report the local news here,” said Gen. Mgr. Tillie Flynn, who has been running the newspaper since 1984. “We’ve definitely been the number one news source for the county since 1880.”
In actuality, the Lake County Examiner was the second newspaper to serve county residents. The first was called the State Line Herald, founded in Nov. 1878 by two brothers, Judge C.B. Watson and W.W. Watson. Back then, a yearly subscription to the four-page, six column paper cost $3 a year. At that time, the paper supported itself primarily through revenue from publishing claims for land grants. Income came from the Government Land Office, and the papers had little in the way of advertising.
Newspapers of that era were not necessarily bound by journalism ethics to be nonpartisan. The Herald was taken to task for blatantly espousing Republican views. In an ironic twist, Lake County’s newspaper of record would be founded by a group of disgruntled Democrats.
Fed up with the State Line Herald’s republicanism, two registered democrats Stephen P. Moss and C.A. Cogswell, founded the Lake County Examiner, hiring Frank Coffin as its first editor. In its inaugural editorial, the Examiner vowed to make the rival Herald “show its Republican ears.”
The first newspaper battle of Lake County was joined, but it would be a short one. Even then, Lake County was a rural community, with widely dispersed residents, and soon the battle took its toll. Both papers fought over the small number of subscriptions and land claims. It was only the next year that C.B. Watson sold the State Line Herald to James H. Evans, who was the register of the Land Office. Evans in turn bought out the Examiner in 1882 from Cogswell and Moss and merged the two papers under the Lake County Examiner name.
The Examiner was soon resold back to Cogswell and Moss, who brought back Coffin as editor. Coffin eventually became the owner himself, but when he left town convinced F.W. Beach, then beginning to establish the Klamath Star at Linkville, to run the Examiner in 1884.
The Beaches controlled the Examiner for the next 20 years, when it was sold to an Oscar Metzker. Metzker’s tenure as owner was notable for bringing in the first linotype a modern-style printing machine that used a 90-character keyboard to create an entire line of metal type by pouring molten metal into molds.
Metzker sold the newspaper to Fred Bowman, who eventually sold the Examiner to Fred P. Cronemiller of Klamath Falls in 1911. Cronemiller, who had moved to Lakeview with his wife and three sons in 1908, also acquired the Lake County Herald, a competing newspaper originally founded in 1895 as the Lake County Rustler and merged it into the Examiner. He would run the newspaper until his death in 1924, with his wife and son Guy publishing until 1935, when they sold it to Hugh McGilvra and C.J. Gillette.
In 1940, McGilvra and Gillette sold the paper to Thornton Gale and Glen Charles. Gale was the owner of the Lake County Tribune, and the papers merged upon the sale. Since 1940, the Lake County Examiner has been the sole newspaper of record for Lake County.

Charles published the Examiner until he died in 1956. His wife Anna remarried and continued to publish the paper until selling it in 1967 to Dave and Micke Trussell. The Trussells owned the Examiner until 1976, when Earl G. Parsons bought it. Parsons would own the paper for only three years until selling it in 1979 to Scripps-Ifft Newspapers.
In 1983, the Examiner was acquired by Klamath Publishing, a subsidiary of Pioneer Newspapers. The next year, Flynn was hired as an advertising manager and shortly became general manager.
“Jokingly, I had suggested to my boss that they should acquire the Examiner and I would run it,” said Flynn, who at the time was working for the Klamath Herald & News. “It was a bit of a surprise when that’s what actually turned out to happen.”
The Lake County Examiner’s first permanent home was in this Masonic Temple, which was destroyed by the fire of 1900. As the years have passed, the Lake County Examiner has changed hands, it has also shifted its location several times. Its first permanent home was in the town’s first Masonic Temple, completed in 1883, where the Examiner conducted business on the bottom floor. In 1900, fire swept through Lakeview and destroyed most of the downtown businesses. Three years later, the Masonic Temple was rebuilt, and the Examiner moved back in for the next 10 years.
In 1913, publisher Cronemiller moved the Examiner to the corner of what are now E and No. 1st Streets, in the front part of what is now Thornton’s Lakeview Floral & Gifts. The Lake County Examiner was published there for the next 46 years, until 1959. The Examiner returned to the Masonic Temple just a block away and stayed there until it was demolished in 1974. The paper took up temporary quarters between the Alger Theatre and the Montgomery Ward store before moving back into a brand new building created under the ownership of David Trussell at 101 N. F St.
In 1986, the Examiner moved its offices to 305 No. F Street. it remained there until 2001, when in June it moved into its current location at 739 No. 2nd Street.
To date, the Examiner has published more than 6,500 editions every week since February 7, 1880. As it has for 125 years and counting, the Lake County Examiner continues to play an essential part in bringing important news to the citizens of Lake County.
“People here want to be informed,” Flynn said. “If people look for news, whether it’s political or social or recreational or educational, they look to the Examiner.”The Examiner’s current offices keep local readers up to date with an experienced staff using the latest technology.