The Glasgow Courier Archive 

The Glasgow [Montana] Courier, a six-column, ten-page weekly, began publication in 1903, 16 years after the arrival of the St. Paul, Minneapolis, & Manitoba Railroad in Glasgow in 1887. On August 11, 1913, a Culbertson, Montana publisher, T. Joseph Hocking, arrived in Glasgow as the new owner of the Valley County Independent. He immediately changed the paper's name to the Glasgow Courier. Hocking remained the owner of the Republican weekly until its sale in 1958.

The first issue of the Courier under Hocking's ownership proclaimed the opening of 1.3 million acres of the Fort Peck Reservation to non-Indians. Those early issues contained numerous ads for land sales, referring to Glasgow as the "Gateway City." Hocking also promoted the second annual Valley County Fair. The Courier reported the arrest of dozens of "aliens" for carrying weapons not registered with the Montana Fish & Game Department. The 1910s marked an era of fear of foreign farmers and workers associated with the Non-Partisan League and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), resulting in the passage of alien and sedition acts. The Courier published an editorial blasting an IWW riot in Minot, North Dakota, accusing the IWW of adhering to political views to the left of the Socialists and all other labor unions. The Courier quoted the Grand Forks [North Dakota] Herald denouncing the IWW as an organization that "respects no contract, stands by no agreement, and makes war on everything." However, the Courier did favorably report on a rally for women's suffrage at which Jeannette Rankin, Montana suffragist and future Congresswoman, spoke.

By 1942, Sam Gilluly was editor, and Glasgow's contributions to the war effort were in full swing. The paper purchased the subscription lists of the Glasgow Messenger and the Glasgow Times as well as the Messenger's printing equipment, declaring in a headline that "War and Economic Necessity Make Impractical Three Papers Here." The Courier reported on the opening of a war industry training school used to teach sheet metal skills to future shipyard workers. Reports of increasingly large numbers of Valley County men joining the armed forces appeared regularly in the Courier's pages. A local "enemy alien" made the news when he voluntarily surrendered his camera and radio to the police.

In October 1942, the announcement came that three air bases were to be built in Glasgow, Lewistown, and Cut Bank as satellites of the Army Air Base in Great Falls. Each was to support a B-17 bomber squadron. The Glasgow base was activated on November 10, with the first planes and crew arriving two days later. The presence of the bomber crews and their planes, however, was short-lived; the last squadron to train in Glasgow left for Europe in October 1943. The base would be vacant until 1945, when 400 German prisoners of war were housed there during their time working on local farms.

After the surrender of Japan on August 15, the Courier was published a day late "... for the first time that we can remember, thanks to Hirohito." Not all was joyful, however. The editor acknowledged this, writing, "But it is not with unmixed joy, as we walk down the street, for in almost every block we see homes where there will never be an end to the memory of war."