The weekly Valley of the Moon Review was founded in Boyes Hot Springs in 1946 by Colonel E.A. Little. Zan Stark and his son, A.J. Stark Jr., bought the paper in 1953. They turned it into a daily in 1958. The paper ceased publication in 1961. Zan Sr. was a well known publisher of “real picture post cards” of Northern California scenes. He died in Sonoma in 1977. As noted in the article about the history of the paper, their offices and printing plant were on Sonoma Highway, “across from Calle del Monte.”
Copies of the paper are scarce. The Sonoma Historical Society recently came into possession of a few of them. Among them, very fortunately, was the front page of the last edition of the weekly paper before it changed to a daily. It is signed, with an inscription, by Zan Stark Jr. who was publisher and editor.
The daily paper covered national news as well as local. Many stories from United Press International may reflect Zan Jr.’s eventual employment by them. He later became the bureau chief of UPI in Portland, Oregon.
Stay tuned for more from this trove of Boyes Hot Springs history!
Newspaper images courtesy of the Sonoma Valley Historical Society
Post card image courtesy of Stanford University Library, Special Collections
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