Places

Valley News (Dundee, Illinois)

The **Valley News** was a newspaper published in Dundee, Illinois, active at least through the mid-1920s. It is documented as the publication where Gilbert I. Garretson served as editor prior to transitioning to an academic career in journalism education. The Valley News represents an early chapter in the organized press history of the Dundee area, though detailed records of its founding, circulation, and lifespan remain limited in currently available sources.

Scanned newspaper page from Image 13 of Brownsville herald (Brownsville, Tex.), April 17, 1927, (AUTOMOBILE SECTION), showing a feature article about Professor Gilbert I. Garretson, former editor of the Valley News of Dundee, Illinois, and his role as head of the journalism department at Oklahoma City University — Scanned newspaper page from Image 13 of Brownsville herald (Brownsville, Tex.), April 17, 1927, (AUTOMOBILE SECTION), 1927-04-17 (Library of Congress, Chronicling America) | Source: Library of Congress, Chronicling America

History

Little is currently known about the founding or publishing history of the Valley News. The paper's name suggests a connection to the Fox River valley geography that defines the Dundee area, a naming convention common among regional weeklies and semi-weeklies of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

By at least the early-to-mid 1920s, the Valley News employed a trained journalist as editor — a sign that it operated with some degree of professional ambition, if not necessarily a large staff or readership. Whether the paper was a weekly, semi-weekly, or daily publication has not been confirmed by sources currently held in The Kiln's collection.

The Valley News is believed to have been one of several small newspapers serving the communities of Dundee and the surrounding Kane County region during the Jazz Age / Roaring Twenties era, a period of modest but steady growth for the Fox River valley towns.

Notable Associations

Gilbert I. Garretson, Editor

The most documented connection to the Valley News comes through Gilbert I. Garretson, who served as the paper's editor before pursuing a career in journalism education. According to a feature article published in the Brownsville Herald on April 17, 1927, Garretson went on to become head of the Department of Journalism at Oklahoma City University, where he accompanied twenty-five students on a journalistic expedition to Brownsville, Texas, and northern Mexico. (Source: brownsville_herald_1927-04-17_seq13)

Garretson held degrees from Iowa Wesleyan College and Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, and had worked at several notable publications before and presumably after his time at the Valley News — including the Associated Press, the Des Moines Register, the Burlington Hawkeye, and the Mt. Pleasant News. The precise dates of his tenure at the Valley News have not been established from available sources. (Source: brownsville_herald_1927-04-17_seq13)

His career trajectory suggests the Valley News functioned as a legitimate, if local, rung on the professional journalism ladder of the era — attracting editors with regional and even national-caliber training.

Sources

brownsville_herald_1927-04-17_seq13 — Image 13 of Brownsville Herald (Brownsville, Tex.), April 17, 1927, Automobile Section. Library of Congress, Chronicling America. URL: https://www.loc.gov/resource/sn86063730/1927-04-17/ed-1/?sp=13

- Primary source for the identification of the Valley News as a Dundee, Illinois newspaper and for Gilbert I. Garretson's role as its editor.

This page was created from a single external source. Additional documentation about the Valley News — including its founding date, publishing schedule, ownership, and closure — is sought. If you have local records, photographs, or surviving issues, please contact The Kiln's editorial team.