Paul Bunyan: Difference between revisions
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The oldest surviving mention of him in print is a an article James MacGillivray wrote for the ''Detroit News'' in 1910 called "[https://web.archive.org/web/20090907102759/http://mgilleland.com/roundriver1.htm The Round River Drive]" that related several anecdotes about Paul Bunyan and his logging crew. This story was [https://web.archive.org/web/20111124180529/http://www.mgilleland.com/roundriver2.htm redone] in prose form for the ''American Lumberman'' in 1914. But Paul's big break didn't come until two years later, when he got into ''[[Advertising]]!''
Starting in 1916, ad man W.B. Laughead wrote some pamphlets for the Red River Lumber Company that used stories of Paul Bunyan to try and sell their product; these pamphlets are collectively known as ''[https://web.archive.org/web/20191017224842/http://www.gutenberg.org/catalog/world/readfile?fk_files=9182 The Marvelous Exploits of Paul Bunyan]''. Laughead is credited with creating most of the commonly known Bunyan lore, [[Newer Than They Think|including Babe the Blue Ox and the idea that Paul Bunyan was a giant]].
As it so happened, while they weren't much good at improving lumber sales, these pamphlets proved immensely popular for their entertainment value. And, since advertisements are meant to be distributed as widely as possible, free of charge, the Red River Lumber Company had never bothered to copyright Laughead's stories. This combination led to everyone and their grandmother putting out new Paul Bunyan stories, cribbing plenty of concepts and characters from Laughead's pamphlets. New logging camp characters were added, the site of Paul's operations moved from state to state, his size ranged from titanic to merely brobdinagian, and other professions requiring an equal mix of brute force and quickwitted ingenuity were attributed to him.
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