By Emily Lovell

    One man who has probably done more to perpetuate the history of Tularosa than any other person is James E. Anderson who for slightly more than 20 years edited and published the “Tularosa Valley Tribune”
    Pages of the newspaper tell the story of the village from 23 January 1909 to August 1929, when the paper was discontinued.
    Anderson, a native of Indiana, came to New Mexico on a homesteader ticket which cost $25 round trip from Chicago to Alamogordo.    He was in the newspaper business there, too, and his brother-in-law, the late Daniel A. Fribley, induced him to come out to New Mexico. He was 24 years old.
    Fribley had been chosen family “scout”. He was to come to Oscura where a family friend, a Mr. Rafferty wanted to put a dam across Bull Gap and irrigate the desert. Rafferty wanted support for his scheme.
    Anderson and Fribley arrived at Oscura on 17 April 1907. The next morning they went out to look over the proposed project. Fribley took his gun along and had so much fun hunting jackrabbits that he decided he would go to Alamogordo to look for a job. Neither of the young men approved of investing in Rafferty’s dam.
    To occupy himself while Fribley was in Alamogordo, Anderson got a job building a livery stable for a man named Furry. One windy day, Anderson was asked to take some scaffolding down.
    He went out to hit the stub with his hammer and did not remember another thing until he awoke in Alamogordo the next morning. The malpais and concrete wall had blown down on him breaking his back. Two vertebrae were broken, his ankle crushed, and he also received head and chest injuries.
    The morning of 1 May, 1907, Anderson was taken into Alamogordo on a stretcher. He had been put on the night train. Father Mijon, who was the priest at St. Francis church at the time, had been visiting at Three Rivers with the late A. B. Fall and was returning to Tularosa. He was told of the injured man and went up to the baggage car to ride with the unconscious Anderson.    Mrs. Maude Fribley, Anderson’s sister, came to be with her husband and brother.
    The move to Tularosa was made by Anderson on 31 December 1908. After his recuperation, he had been working in Alamogordo for J. P. Annan as a typesetter for $10 a week on Annan’s newspaper. Annan was building a sanitarium at the entrance to Alamo Canyon. It later burned.
    H. M. Kellogg, then deputy county clerk, loaned Anderson $200 which he used to begin the Tribune. He bought new equipment from Barnhart Brothers for $2200.
    After leaving the newspaper game, Anderson served as justice of the peace for nine years, was mayor of Tularosa and filled terms as county commissioner when the present courthouse was built in 1955-56 and previously , in 1951-52.
    He has been writing insurance since 1920. He received his first notary public commission on 22 December 1909–a commission he has held continuously and which is in force until 1961.
    Anderson was grand patriarch of the New Mexico I.O.O.F. in 1935 and 1936.
    On April 12, 1915, he married Mrs. Inez Hurgz, a widow with a young daughter, Lavelma. Mrs. Anderson had come from Iowa in 1903. She was the former Inez Hism. The Andersons have two children, Eda (now Mrs. James Baird) and Lloyd. Two younger children, Clara Rebecca and Fabius, died in infancy.
    Anderson’s parents had come from Pennsylvania to homestead on the Tippecanoe River. He was orphaned at six and spent 11 years in an orphanage.
    While working for Bobbs-Merrill, publishers, he met James Whitcomb Riley. As a boy at the orphanage, he had seen Riley, leaning back against a tree, “scribbling,” and watching kids dive off a steep bank into their swimming hole. Riley had even gone to the orphanage, where Anderson heard him tell his famous “bear story.”
    Other authors Anderson met were Booth Tarkington and both McCutcheons.
    Another position Anderson held was freight and passenger elevator operator for the son of General Lew Wallace.
    Of his own term in village public office, Anderson recalls that he assumed his position as mayor when the wooden water mains were leaking so badly that trucks were not allowed along the north side of the street.

TULAROSA’S FIRST NEWSPAPER OCCUPIED FOUR DIFFERENT HOMES
    Tularosa’s only newspaper from 23 January 1909 to August 1929 had four different homes. Editor-Publisher James E. Anderson recalls.
    Site of the first office is in front of where the brick school now stands, as a copse was located where the school is. The office was at the north end of a building which housed the cigar factory.
    Ruby Davenport was typesetter for Anderson at that time.
    The second store faced the J. W. (Buck) Prude store (present location of Dill’s Food Market at Second on Granado.) It was on the northeast corner and also housed an undertaking establishment and furniture store which Anderson operated in connection with the “Tribune.” The Otero County State Bank is on the site now.
    Fribley’s Cleaners is now located in the third building which housed the “Tribune.” This is on Granado at Fifth street. A Mr. Lucero owned the building at the time and had his residence adjacent to it.
    Longtime home of the newspaper during the 20's was in the building where Joe’s Friendly Bar is just off Third on Granado. Anderson acquired the property from the Otero County State Bank which had taken it over from the Isaac Otis interests. The upper floor, reached by a stairway at the right, was used by Odd Fellows, Masons, and Woodman of the World lodges.
    The “Tribune” at first occupied the entire first floor but later shared the west portion of Winset Restaurant and the Fribley Meat Market.
    Knights of Columbus now use the second floor of the building.

[Source: "Tularosa Centennial, May 1860-1960" - Published by the Tularosa Centennial Committee. Transcribed by Elaine Watson]

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