Early Days Of The Bigheart Newspaper

With the new town of Bigheart formed in 1905, people flocked to the area looking for wealth in the Osage oil fields. others came to Bigheart with dreams of operating a business. One of those businesses was having a local newspaper to relay news to the citizens of the fledgling town. In the beginning there were a few papers competing with one another for readers. The Bigheart Spasm was operated by Ernest Putter along with his father and sister,  the Bigheart Chronicle,  with E.E. Waltman as the editor and publisher and the Bigheart Star were there in the beginning but the main paper that held on through the years would be the Bigheart Times. Though it had a late start compared to the other papers, it came to existence on May 15, 1919 with A.R. Zenor and his son Paul operating the presses. In the beginning the Bigheart Times was located on the north side of Main Street between 7th and 8th Street.

Bigheart, OK. 1919. The Bigheart Times, located near the center of the photo was ran by A.R. Zenor

The Bigheart Times would change it's name on January 1st 1922 to the Barnsdall Times. The Zenor's would operate the newspaper and move it to a new location to the west side of 5th Street between Main and Maple when a new building had been completed on the site. In September, 1930, the newspaper was sold to Art and Christine Moore, The Moore's came from Kansas where Art learned the newspaper business from his father. In 1934, Marvin Bridgeford started working at the paper as a printer where he stayed until retirement. Others including in helping produce the paper during the Moore years were Max Purdom and Harry Moore.

Barnsdall Times building, 1950.

 Christine and Art Moore with Marvin Bridgeford, 1972.

On March 1, 1972, the Moore's sold the Barnsdall Times to Bob and Yvonne Evans from Perkins, OK. Upon the retirement of Marvin Bridgeford the Barnsdall Times would change it's way of printing. By the mid 1970's the printing of the paper would cease at it's location on 5th Street and the paper would be printed at other locations. The building which had printed papers since the 1930's would soon be shut down and moved to the east side of 5th Street, across from the building that would hold the printing relics of years past. 

The Barnsdall Times would change locations  two more times and have one name change becoming the Bigheart Times once again. On February 18, 2015 a fire broke out in the building next to the old Times building. Fire destroyed the upper part of the building and damage was done to the lower floor which housed all the antique printing machines. Another piece of Barnsdall's past is now in the process of fading away. How many stories could the building tell over the past 85 years is unknown but I feel certain that what is left of the printing machines are in their own way trying to tell those cleaning up about the days gone by.