Wood entered the newspaper business as a printer in his teens.
[1] In 1887, at the age of 21,[2] he founded the Gering Courier, a newspaper he ran until his death in 1945.
[3] He was also a breeder of cattle,[4] and, like many publishers of that time, the local postmaster.
[5][6] In 1925, he was elected state senator of Nebraska's Thirty-third District.
[7] He served as a Republican senator through 1930, and was known as an advocate of clean government and irrigation policy.