08/21/2026
FROM HERE TO THERE – COMMUNICATION
This information was found in the JOURNEY TO TOMMORROW 1816 – 1966 Sesquicentennial Publication.
Logan’s post office service goes back to the earlies days of the fledgling village. For fifty years the mail was carried by packhorse and stagecoach. With the coming of the railroad, and Logan’s status as a division point, the volume of mail and postal business entered a new dimension. When the railroad discontinued its passenger and mail service, today’s modern Highway Post Office Service was instituted, Logan obtained its status as a First-Class Post Office in 1945.
The telegraph, which was really the predecessor of the long-distance telephone in the communications business, first served Logan in 1851, the line being an extension of that service from Lancaster. After the Hocking Calley Railroad was built and operating, a commercial telegraph line was strung on the same poles which carried the Railroad’s own lines for signal and communication uses. The Western Union system maintained a “daytime office” in Logan until about twenty years ago. For many years “nighttime” messages were sent and received at the railroad depot, with the railroad telegraphers serving in a dual role. Those were the days when all messages were sent in Morse Code, but the telegraph’s key was finally supplanted by the teletype unit.
Telephone service was first provided in Logan by the Standard Telephone Company, which received a franchise from the town council in 1897 for the er****on of its poles and lines along the public streets and alleys. This was locally organized concern, later to be known as the Citizens Telephone Company. Its exchange was located in the James Building. In 19126 this firm, under its incorporated name, the Logan Home Telephone Company, moved its operation and warehouse to the old Sheriff’s residence and jail on East Second Street; this is still the center of telephone service operations in Logan.
A number of local newspaper advertisements of sixty years ago carried the notation, “Both Phones”. The other local telephone service was provided by the Bell Telephone Company which operated here during the first two decades of the century. Its exchange was on the second floor of the McCarthy Building (now the Blosser Building). It sold its local lines to the competing local company but continued to operate its long-distance toll lines in cooperation with the local firm.
Logan’s F.M. radio Station, WLGN, began operation in the late 1965, under the management of George Charles.
Newspapers have always served as one of the most valuable and basic forms of communication. The story of Logan’s newspapers would be a book in itself. Before the advent of the telegraph or telephone before the existence of press associations the local editor was compelled to draw his newsman, however meager, from the home community to fill his columns and provide some enlivening aspects to his publication and early editor depended on political news and editorials, most of which were highly partisan, often bitter and caustic. If the next election indicated he had supported an acceptable candidate of issue he continued in business; if not, he was most likely out of business shortly thereafter.
The first newspaper established here was called the NEWS; it closed out on the election of Harrison in 1840. Apparently, that same year the HOCKING REPUBLICAN (Democrat in Politics) began operation and it too, had a brief existence. Then for two years Logan had no newspaper.
In 1848 the HOCKING VALLEY REPUBLICAN began operation; in 1850 moved to McArthur.
In 1852 the MORNING STAR, a Whig paper was started, it lasted a year and its material assets were consolidated with the SENTINEL.
A second version of the HOCKING VALLEY REPUBLICAN appeared in 1855 and the REPUBLICAN PRESS in 1865. In 1861 both were consolidated under the name of the LOGAN RECORD AND MONITOR, and the same equipment was used to found the HOCKING DEMOCRAT IN 1863.
Telephone advertisement was posted in 1889.