From the first issue of the Los Angeles Examiner, December 13, 1903
ALL SOUTHWEST WELCOMES THE EXAMINER;
CITY NEVER HAD SUCH A DEMONSTRATION
Streets of Los Angeles Crowded with Marching Citizens Cheering for William Randolph Hearst
Large Delegations Arrive on Every Train with Bands and Fireworks From All Southern California
More Than Ten Thousand Members of Labor Organizations and Unions Salute Examiner Office
With bands, fireworks and a parade in which more than ten thousand marched, the “EXAMINER” was welcomed last night in Los Angeles and Southern California.
 Crowds which packed the downtown streets of this city as they were never packed before cheered the men who marched past them with placards bearing the word “EXAMINER” stuck in their hatbands and carried on poles.
The crowd in front of the “Examiner” office on Broadway, between Fifth and Sixth streets, was so dense that street cars, automobiles and carriages were swallowed up in it and lost to sight. There was a continuous cheer all the evening for W.R. Hearst and cries of “Hearst for President.”
The “EXAMINER” held open house all evening.
The thousands who, acting upon the resolutions of the labor unions of Southern California of their own volition, had come to Los Angeles in special trains to extend a personal welcome to William Randolph Hearst’s new paper, marched past the office in a continuous line.
“Hearst for the White House”
The “Examiner” and Mr. Hearst were cheered repeatedly by transparencies with such inscriptions as “Hearst for the White House” . . .
After the big parade was over all the prominent labor leaders . . . called at the “Examiner” office to give even a more personal welcome to the new paper.
Most of the men who filled the special trains which came from San Diego, Randsburg [see below], San Bernardino, Redlands, Santa Barbara and other towns visited the office during the evening.
Inspecting the New Building and Plant
Many of them inspected the magnificent new building, the finest newspaper plant west of Chicago, and then filed into the streets to augment the crowd that already thronged the thoroughfares.
The front of the “EXAMINER’S” five-story building was a sea of light.
 Two immense signs carrying in incandescent letters the words “LOS ANGELES EXAMINER” stretched across the entire front of the building.
A great American flag in electric lights and the illuminated line “An American paper for the American people” were also emblazoned on the front of the building.
These glittering signs were framed in long festoons of red, white and blue electric lights, more than 1,100 in number, which were strung upon wires covered with green leaves and flowers.
As the last of the many bands in the parade reached the building, it halted to play “America.”
While the vast crowd cheered there were discharged from the fifth floor of the “Examiner” building half a million firecrackers.
Red and blue fire was burned in the streets below and fire rockets, bombs and Roman candles shot up into the night.
The Great Press Joins in the Roar
The great printing press on the first floor went into action and attended by the roar of the firecrackers, the music of the bands and the cheers of the crowd, the work of printing all but the news sections of the “Los Angeles Sunday Examiner” began.
This edition consists of more than 50,000 copies . . . .
More than 100 big workers from the Randsburg mines threw up their hats and cheered both the “EXAMINER” and William Randolph Hearst and they marched past the office. . . .
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Randsburg today is a Kern County ghost town, but at one time it was a center of mining. Here is what Larry Vredenburgh‘s Web page A Brief Sketch of the Mining History of the Western Mojave Desert and Southern Sierra Nevada says about it:
For a Southern California map with Randsburg marked, click here.