Ben Hur Lampman (August 12, 1886 – January 24, 1954) was an American newspaper editor, essayist, short story writer, and poet. He was a longtime associate editor at The Oregonian in Portland, Oregon, and he served as Poet laureate of Oregon from 1951 until his death. Early life Ben Lampman was born on August 12, 1886, in Barron, Wisconsin. His father, H. H. Lampman, owned a newspaper in Barron. The family moved to Neche, North Dakota, when Ben was 4 years old, and his father founded another newspaper in Neche after arriving there. As a boy, he worked in his father's print shop. He left home at age 15 and worked in the wheat country of Canada. He returned to North Dakota. At the age of 19, he married Lena Sheldon (his same age), a New York City resident who had moved to the Dakotas to become a school teacher. They remained married for the remainder of his life. His brother Rex Lampman was a columnist for the Oregon Journal and, later, the Pittsburg Leader. Career His first work in newspaper writing took place when he was 19 years old (1905 or 1906), when he and another young man co-founded the Michigan City Arena, a newspaper in Michigan City, North Dakota. He worked on the Arena for seven years, writing editorials and columns and helping to manage the business. In 1912, Lampman moved from North Dakota to Oregon to become manager and publisher of the Gold Hill News, a weekly newspaper in Gold Hill, Oregon. His writing caught the attention of Paul Kelty, then the news editor of Portland's The Oregonian, who recommended Lampman to editor-in-chief Edgar B. Piper. He was hired, moved to Portland, and began working for The Oregonian on February 1, 1916. For his first 14 months at the paper, he covered police-related news, but also wrote editorials from time to time. In 1920, he published an account of the 1919 Centralia Massacre. In additional to part-time editorial writing, he worked as a reporter and feature writer for The Oregonian until 1922, when the paper made him a full-time editorial writer and an associate editor. He also wrote nature essays in The Oregonian. His stories and essays also appeared in national magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post. Some of his essays about life in Portland were collected in his 1942 book At the End of the