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What we searched. What is still missing.
A comprehensive archive needs to show its boundaries. This survey records the search as well as the findings. It makes no claim that every historical record or emblem variation has been found.
What the sweep actually holds
The harvest is described as 1903–1963, and it is — as a span. As coverage it is not, and the difference is large enough to change how a silence in the middle of it should be read.
236 dated records across 67 of the 119 years from 1908 to 2026, one bar a year, segmented by collection: club life, in the newspapers, 139; the emblem in use, 53; people, places and recollections, 24; books and reference, 20. A fifth band on each bar counts dated sightings of the emblem in use, 157 in all, which are records of an appearance rather than records of their own. The tallest year is 2026 with 36. Beneath the bars, what the newspaper run itself holds between 1903 and 1963: 12 years with no issue at all and 10 holding about half a year each. A gap in the bars over one of those years is the provider's, not the emblem's.
The weekly Bulletin, 1903–1922: 1,018 issues, essentially complete, about 52 issues a year with no year missing. The daily Bulletin, 1917–1963: 9,229 issues, about 65 per cent of a complete run.
1923, 1924, 1926, 1928, 1929, 1930, 1931, 1932, 1934, 1935, 1936, 1937 hold nothing. No issues at all, and because the weekly run stops in 1922 there is no second copy for any of them. The project used to record this gap as 1923, 1924 and 1926. It is four times that, and it swallows the whole of the Depression.
Roughly half a year each against about 305 issues for a full one. 1944, 1945 and 1946 are the wartime years in which the sweep found more candidates than anywhere else, so even there it is reading barely over half the issues. A full year is about 305 issues.
A silence in an absent year means nothing at all. A silence in 1944–1946 is weak evidence at best.
The research note introduces these as "nine more years" and then lists ten. Ten is what the counts show; the word is the error, and it is recorded here rather than quietly corrected in the prose.
- Club life, in the newspapers
- The emblem in use
- People, places and recollections
- Books and reference
- sightings of the emblem in use
- the newspaper run, 1903–1963
- 10 part years
- 12 years with no issue at all
The emblem word-search, 1908–1927
We enumerated 2,769 cataloged issues and obtained 16,854 page records. OCR was retrieved for 16,840 pages. The search found 561 candidate pages, including false matches. These are discovery leads, not 561 verified accounts of the club.
The weekly Bulletin was searched for 1908–1922 and the daily Bulletin for available years in 1917–1927. Title and issue metadata came from Historic Oregon Newspapers. We searched for “emblem,” line breaks within that word and several OCR misspellings. Only selected relevant passages have been inspected on page images and accessioned as evidence.
| Year | Issues | Pages | Leads | Failures |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1908 | 53 | 421 | 5 | 0 / 0 |
| 1909 | 52 | 404 | 2 | 0 / 0 |
| 1910 | 52 | 420 | 5 | 0 / 0 |
| 1911 | 55 | 446 | 1 | 0 / 0 |
| 1912 | 52 | 622 | 10 | 0 / 0 |
| 1913 | 51 | 528 | 11 | 6 / 0 |
| 1914 | 53 | 428 | 17 | 0 / 2 |
| 1915 | 51 | 380 | 10 | 7 / 0 |
| 1916 | 52 | 588 | 33 | 4 / 10 |
| 1917 | 347 | 1638 | 91 | 3 / 2 |
| 1918 | 340 | 1605 | 71 | 1 / 0 |
| 1919 | 356 | 1956 | 81 | 0 / 0 |
| 1920 | 361 | 1957 | 100 | 0 / 0 |
| 1921 | 358 | 1871 | 55 | 0 / 0 |
| 1922 | 257 | 1403 | 40 | 0 / 0 |
| 1925 | 129 | 939 | 9 | 0 / 0 |
| 1927 | 150 | 1248 | 20 | 0 / 0 |
Limits of the search
- No 1923, 1924 or 1926 Bulletin issues are listed in these title catalogs.
- Earlier and later years, other titles, manuscript collections and image-only material were not exhaustively enumerated. Targeted searches outside this range are recorded separately.
- OCR misses damaged type and words split in unexpected ways. A page with no match is not evidence that the club was absent.
- A keyword match can be a floral emblem, an advertisement or an unrelated club. Candidates have not all been read on page images.
- Twenty-one issue metadata requests and fourteen page OCR requests failed after retries; their URLs and errors are retained.
Targeted searches also covered the Oregonian, later Bulletin reports, National Register nominations, the Deschutes Historical Museum’s newsletters, the University of Washington’s historical journal, Oregon trademark specimens, official City presentations, institutional brand pages, retail listings and dated photographs. Their accession records distinguish contemporary reports, later recollections and present-day use.
Beyond the Oregon newspaper catalog
Google News Archive supplied the two May 1924 reports, as images of microfilm spreads. The July 19 issue inspected there is an Elks special edition; the cited Masonic purchase report was not located in its six printed pages. This was a targeted search, not a survey of every issue in the missing years.
The Deschutes Public Library’s newspaper directory identifies further microfilm and online holdings, including the Central Oregon Daily Press. Those collections remain important routes into years absent from the Oregon catalog.
The next original documents to find
- The property sale: the May 13 disbanding report and May 23 editorial have now been recovered from Google News Archive. The July 19, 1924 purchase report cited in a 1939 retrospective and the final deed remain missing.
- The books and papers: a complete scan of the 1913 club book, the original Seattle Contrasts booklet, the song book and toast pictured by the museum, minutes, correspondence, membership and financial records. Ask for accession and collection identifiers.
- The founding accounts: January 1913 recollections sit beside contemporary 1912 reports and a 1943 obituary naming 1911. Keep these distinct until a contemporary document explains the sequence.
- The drawings: printer’s cuts, letterheads, stamps, commission records and original digital files that connect the historic emblem to the supplied common vector. No such chain has been established.
- The glass: photograph O’Kane’s panes individually, recording street frontage, dimensions, straight-on and context views, lead joints, maker’s marks and restoration history. Distinguish surviving original glass from replacements.
Compare the documented emblem drawings and uses · Return to the evidence catalog