History at a Glance

In 1932, Norman Westfall, acting as publisher, editor and chief printer, established a newspaper he called The Hood Canal Courier in Hoodsport. The weekly paper offered local residents the opportunity to keep up with "who, what, where, when, and how" along the canal.

In 1986, the Shelton-Mason County Journal interviewed Ralph Smith, who had gone to work at the Courier after graduating from college. As with all small papers at the time, the type for the paper was all set by hand. Smith related some of the problems associated with that method: "By accident of geography, we made some typographica...