Then and now: Publications come, go and grow

Christopher “Flip” Brandi printed Lake Tahoe News since the 1950s. It generally appeared Wednesdays, and later two days a week.

The offices and printing press eventually were in the block building now housing Verizon Wireless on Highway 50 near Tahoe Keys Boulevard (next to Steamer’s).

In a rear room of that building also were the audio facilities of KHVR-FM (“Heavenly Valley Radio”), 99.9, which survived barely a year in 1961, transmitting from Heavenly’s parking lot. Brandi held an interest in KHVR-FM along with Harrah’s engineer Jack Dumars. There were too few FM listeners (or FM radios) in 1961.

The Tahoe Daily Tribune also published two days a week in the early 1960s, always on days alternate of Brandi’s paper. It additionally sub-billed itself as the Tahoe Sierra Tribune. Chapman Wentworth was the publisher in 1963.

Usually we had one or the other local newspaper on four weekdays of each week.

Do you remember the Tahoe Chronicle weekly on Thursdays? It was started in 1963 at “Stateline, California” by Edwin B. Brown and William Dolan. The pictured masthead is dated Thursday, May 11, 1967.

My thanks to Bob Rockwell of South Lake Tahoe who loaned me these historic newspapers. I am scanning various memories from them for future sharing here on what has become our modern — and daily — local news source.

– Bill Kingman