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The O'Fallon Progress The best consistent chronicle of the history of any town can be found in the local newspaper. The first newspaper in this area was a religious one called The Pioneer which was first published April 25, 1829 by Rev. John Peck at Rock Spring (now east O’Fallon). Much later, after O’Fallon was founded, came small bulletins such as those of the Mace Brothers and one by Adolph Bunsen and Brice and Sam McGeehon. The O’Fallon Progress first appeared Feb. 7, 1895 and has recorded the life of our village and then city ever since. But why was it called The Progress? In 1894, O’Fallon had just built an electric light and water works plant above an underground lake near the present day water tank off West State St. On Dec. 15 of that year the St. Louis Evening Chronicle published an article favorably highlighting O’Fallon. Local businessmen saw both events as an opportunity to advertise the advantages of locating in O’Fallon and perhaps eventually to lure a manufacturing plant here to provide a second source of employment in case the mines closed. They formed the O’Fallon Improvement Assn. and persuaded John Hanley and John Wagner to come to O’Fallon and start a newspaper. It was believed that a newspaper was essential for the progress and improvement of O’Fallon.
John Hanley said in the first issue that “the name of the paper has been duplicated from the present existence of affairs in our bustling little city and it will be our aim and ambition to keep the paper in the procession.” Over a century later O’Fallon is still bustling in ways John Hanley could have never dreamed of!
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