Statement of Intent.
Statement of Intent.
When I took on this project, I was aware of a Resolution that hung neatly framed in the stairwell of the reconstructed Gazette building. It was in the way and was taken down. It was soon retrieved from the building and stored in a "safe" place, somewhere in the park. A copy of it came across my desk and I reprint the better part of it with a few minor adjustments and omissions. It is therefore my Statement of Intent.
In the year 1945, the Legislature passed and the Governor signed into law a bill creating a state park in Columbia, California, which was named and designated as the Columbia Historic State Park.
The ultimate purpose of the creation of the state park in Columbia was to restore all of the buildings in the community so that future generations would be able to visit and see a California Gold Rush town as it was when the Argonauts were working the creeks and diggings.
There is within the Columbia Historic State Park a small framed structure that once housed the "Columbia Gazette," one of the earliest of California's newspapers.
The "Columbia Gazette" building stands as a symbol of early journalistic enterprise, of the development of the free press in California and of a newspaper which was edited and published for rough-and-tumble community of miners, who while seeking gold, likewise sought truth, knowledge and news of contemporary events.
The California Newspaper Publishers Association helped reconstruct that historic small frame structure to create a pioneer printshop, complete with early presses and other printing equipment.
This reconstruction was created to provide a permanent monument and shrine to journalism, to the development of a free press in the State of California and to the memory and accomplishments of those intrepid early-day California newspapermen; to provide an opportunity for California citizens, now and in the years to come, to observe in perfect order and realism a typical pioneer printshop of the Gold Rush period.
From a Senate Resolution created,
March 12, 1959.
This page is created for the benefit of the public by
Floyd D. P. Oydegaard