Two weeks ago, we announced that this newspaper was observing its 120th birthday. The very first issue of The Jena Times was published on March 23, 1905, five years before LaSalle Parish was created. In celebration of our birthday, we redesigned our masthead or flag (name of newspaper at top of front page) but kept the “brand” sensitive font and style of our name. (Having a Millennial daughter working at the office helped us understand this “brand” emphasis in today’s world!)

We would have liked to have had a big birthday celebration for the newspaper close to its actual birthday, but with a few more office renovations still to be done, the soon to be demolition of buildings located near our office and the fact that spring is such a busy time for us, we decided to hold off on our birthday party until National Newspaper Week in October. We will have plenty of announcements and notifications about the event later this year.

Last week, I took a trip down memory lane to discover what was happening in what is now known as LaSalle Parish back in 1905, when the paper first began. The truth is, the first issues of this newspaper I could find were in 1906, a year after it was started. This is of course thanks to the LaSalle Parish Library’s digital archives that can be found at www.lasalle.advantage-preservation. com.

Around 1926, a fire at the newspaper office destroyed all the archived, printed editions of the newspaper from 1905 until that year so we have no actual printed copies of this newspaper before 1927. Our office morgue (where bounded copies of every issue we’ve ever published is stored in large books) starts at 1927 and continues to this year. We have every issue in bounded books by years that is available for public viewing at any time. It’s real interesting to look back at our parish’s history as recorded in this newspaper.

I anticipated that the creation of LaSalle Parish would be the top story, and it was for several years during the first decade of the turn of the century. LaSalle was carved out of Catahoula Parish in 1908 by the legislature under the leadership of Henry Hardtner of Urania. Yes, that Henry Hardtner. During those years, he was not just a prominent lumber company owner, but a very influential man in the state.

Although it was created by the Louisiana Legislature on July 3, 1908, the official first year of its existence would not be until 1910. The reason was because it would take at least a couple of years to get all the necessary ward creations, elections and other official capacities in place before it actually went live. The year 1910 also coincided with census data and seemed to be an appropriate year to begin.

I also expected there to be many articles about where the parish seat would be located. All my life, I have heard that the feud between Olla and Jena originated with this very issue. I had been told that what started it all was that both Olla and Jena wanted the parish seat to be their town and when Jena was chosen, the agelong rift occurred between the two sides of the parish. While this may have been the case, there was actually not much reported about this issue in early issues of this newspaper.

It appears that the legislature deemed Jena as the appropriate town to be the parish seat strictly by population standards. It was and still is the largest populated town in the parish – something in which Henry Hardtner himself did not argue 120 years ago. In fact, besides Jena, the two other prospective parish seat locations were Summerville and Searcy.

It turns out that the most controversial issue relating to the creation of LaSalle Parish was where the parish courthouse would be located in Jena. There was a disagreement as some wanted it to be in Old Jena and others wanted it in New Jena (current downtown area). Old Jena was located about two miles south of New Jena in the Bellevue area along Hemphill (Hemps) Creek. The controversy was a blackeye to the new parish at the time as the feud made news all the way to the state Capital.

Old Jena was settled around1802when the Hemphill family arrived at the location. Later, the creek was given its name after the family and a post office was eventually placed there, also given the area’s name as Hemps Creek. In 1871, the Post Office Department requested the elimination of “creek” from the names of all post offices and a visitor from Jena, Illinois suggested renaming Hemps Creek after his hometown. The idea was accepted, and Jena was incorporated with its new name in 1906.

But back to the controversy of where to locate the new parish courthouse. Old Jena was losing residents as New Jena was thriving. Despite Old Jena proponents (among those were prominent members of the community) choosing a wonderful plum orchard as its location, the newly created LaSalle Parish Police Jury, under the leadership of Jury President Henry Hardtner, voted to locate the new parish courthouse in New Jena at a place called the “Ridge,” – its current location.

The reasons were that the Old Jena location was too near the railroad tracks and felt trains that were increasingly coming in and through the area would be a distraction for court and other official proceedings. Remember, this was before air conditioning when windows had to be left open for the breeze.

The controversy was so great that many special front-page articles were published by The Jena Times editor A.S. Harrell during the years of 1908 and 1909. No doubt, the controversy helped to sell many newspapers when the cost of a single- issue was only 5 cents.

In the coming months leading up to our big celebration in October, I’ll take more walks down memory lane and share with readers more interesting news the paper has covered during the past 120 years. Stay tuned.