"Polk County Enterprise"

Duane's take

The way the official marker tells it, here's the story of the Polk County Enterprise. Way back in 1882, two men by the names of J. M. and J.

C. Stockton set up a newspaper out in East Texas and called it, simply enough, the East Texas Pinery. Not the flashiest name ever hung on a press, but it was theirs, and they ran with it.

Then, around 1903, the paper got itself a new identity. The Stocktons' East Texas Pinery became the Polk County Enterprise, and that name stuck. Now, if you want to talk about a day that stopped the whole town cold, you have to talk about 1920.

That was the year the Enterprise's office installed its first linotype machine. A linotype machine, for those of you ridin' along who've never seen one, is a magnificent, clattering, brass-and-iron contraption that sets whole lines of type in molten metal, and when one of those things fired up for the first time, people took notice. How much notice?

The marker tells us school was dismissed so the pupils could come watch it operate. The schoolchildren of Polk County got the day off, not for a holiday, not for a parade, but to stand and stare at a printing machine doing its work. That right there tells you something about what a newspaper meant to a community.

By 1970, when this story was set down in stone, the Enterprise was in the hands of the Ben Ogletree family and Billy C. Dove, the paper's publishers. From J.

M. and J. C. Stockton to the Ogletrees and Billy C.

Dove, the presses kept runnin'.

What the marker says

Founded in 1882 as "East Texas Pinery" by J. M. and J. C. Stockton. Changed name to "Polk County Enterprise" about 1903. when the office installed first linotype machine (1920), school was dismissed so pupils could watch it operate. Ben Ogletree family and Billy C. Dove, present publishers. (1970)