About
With a readership of 13, 121 (including our free Saturday edition), the Oxbow Herald has served the province of West Dakota since 1887. Brought into existence by firebrand publisher Wilhelm Afred Alfreddssen, the scion of the Alfreddssen winter wheat empire, sometimes called the “Medicis of the Prairie”, the Herald was the leading voice during the violent cattle wars of the 1890s. Following the secession of West Dakota from Sasaskakatchewan in 1899, the Herald became the province’s leading voice in all matters of politics and industry.
The Herald remains world famous for its photojournalism during the Great Oxbow Flood of 1936, when a full two-thirds of the city’s population died ofdysentery while waiting for federal aid to arrive.
The experience forged Oxbow’s “Fuck You” spirit, that can still seen today in the great city’s few civic institutions. Oxbow is the largest city in North America without traffic lights. Oxbow’s low literacy rate has contributed to an ongoing mistrust of outsiders. The Herald’s 1954 reporting of riots following the introduction of music and the ensuing federal crackdown earned the paper three Pulitzer Prizes.
The Herald was also a major force in not reporting the growth of the city’s massive drug trade during the 1970s, a period when city government was dominated by motorcycle gangs. And as oil was found during the 1980s, the Herald turned a blind eye to environmental disaster and graft, while oil companies easily bought off our mayor, Tomas “Lizard” Swenson.
The 1990s saw Oxbow become Canada’s leading center for private military contractors, thanks to the close relationship between her motorcycle gangs and the oil industry. With the expansion of data centers and the financial sector, Oxbow is now western Canada’s financial powerhouse.
The combination of old world charm and new world sensibilities has led many observers to call Oxbow the “Montreal of non-francophone Canada”.
The Herald continues to serve our community, and looks forward to providing another century of thin reporting and community cheerleading where better papers might commit journalism. The Oxbow Herald has been, and will remain, the mouthpiece of western Canada.