Ben Hur Lampman (November 27, 1886–March 2, 1954) was a U.S. newspaper editor, essayist, short story writer, and poet. He was a longtime editor of The Oregonian in Portland, Oregon, and he served as poet laureate of Oregon from 1951 until his death.
Lampman was born in Wisconsin and raised in a small town in North Dakota. 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 and married Lena Sheldon, a New York City resident who had moved to the Dakotas to become a school teacher. He moved with his family to Gold Hill, Oregon, where he worked for the local newspaper. In 1916, he moved to Portland to become a reporter for The Oregonian. In 1920 he published an account of the 1919 Centralia Massacre. In 1921 he was appointed an editor of the editorial page.
He began publishing 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 Car Line. In 1943 he won an O. Henry Award for his short story "Blinker Was a Good Dog", which originally appeared in the Atlantic Monthly. Some of his papers and manuscripts are now in the collection of the library of the University of Oregon. He is buried in Lincoln Memorial Cemetery in Portland.
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Last updated: 10-12-2005 09:29:36
