About Monte Vista journal and Monte Vista graphic-reporter. (Monte Vista, Colo.) 1921-1925
Monte Vista, Colo. (1921-1925)

The Monte Vista Journal and Monte Vista Journal and Monte Vista Graphic-Reporter

Rio Grande County is located in south-central Colorado, in the San Luis Valley. Before white settlement of the area, the land was inhabited by the Ute people. Early settlers lived as farmers and shepherds, but the discovery of gold in the San Juan Mountains brought increased settlement in the 1870s. The expansion of the Denver & Rio Grande Railroad connected the communities that cropped up in the San Luis Valley with the mining boom. Between the stations of Alamosa and Del Norte, the railroad built a water tank at a point called Lariat, which eventually became the incorporated town of Monte Vista, Colorado, in 1886.

On December 16, 1888, the first issue of The Monte Vista Journal was published. The paper was founded by John H. Bloom and "Colonel" Charles S. Conant. The town of Monte Vista was a thriving agricultural center, as attested by the Journal's slogan "Peas, Pigs, Potatoes and Prosperity" (Colorado Newspapers: A History & Inventory, 1859-2000, Jane C. Harper, Craig W. Leavitt, and Thomas J. Noel, 2014). The 1889 N.W. Ayer & Son's American Newspaper Annual listed the paper as Republican, but by 1899 the paper was affiliated with the Populist Party. Conant was a staunch supporter of Populist and reform movements.

Our old friend, Col. Conant, of the Monte Vista Journal is putting in some good strokes for the reform work these days. The Colonel is an old wheel-horse in the work and one of the advanced thinkers of the west (Montrose Enterprise, April 28, 1900).

In the spring of 1900, Conant installed a Cranston press and began "issuing the Monte Vista Journal in a new form, having changed from the cumbersome 'blanket sheet' to a neat five column quarto" (Del Norte Sentinel) in the Monte Vista Journal, May 12, 1900). The Journal was a family business. Conant's sons, James W. and Charles Palmer, set type before and after school (Colorado Newspapers). In 1904, Conant leased the plant and business to James while he traveled to California. James acted as publisher of the paper from 1904 to 1908, and again after his father's death in 1918. James's brother, Palmer, joined him as co-publisher and editor from 1919 to 1925. In 1921, the business purchased the Monte Vista Graphic-Reporter and for a time published as the Monte Vista Journal and Monte Vista Graphic-Reporter.

Max Hardy, son of Colorado Congressman Guy U. Hardy, who also published The Canon City Record, leased the Journal in 1929 from the Conants. In 1931, Hardy also took over the management of the other Monte Vista paper, the Monte Vista Tribune, publishing the Journal on Fridays and the Tribune on Tuesdays. James Conant again took over the lease of the Journal in 1933. During World War II, the Journal became the first newspaper in the United States to be published by German POWs, who were imprisoned at a camp near Monte Vista. From Colorado Newspapers:

When Publisher James W. Conant and three printers became ill an emergency call

was sent by Lonnie Pippin, the newspaper's manager, to Capt. James L. Monson, in

charge of the temporary war prisoner camp. Capt. Monson polled the Nazis and asked, "Have you ever had any newspaper experience?"

The poll produced a typesetter, a stereotyper and a press feeder. They were

rushed to the Journal plant and with Pippin directing the trio the newspaper came out on

time (Colorado Editor, December 22, 1944).

Lonnie Pippin purchased the Journal in 1945, ending the Conant family's 57 years of ownership. The Steamboat Pilot enthused on May 16, 1957, that, under Pippin's management,

Monte Vista has one of the great weekly newspapers in the entire nation. Lonnie Pippin has built it into an institution in the San Luis [V]alley. There is not a thing on the newspaper that he cannot do and do well.

Pippin sold the Journal to the McKinney Newspaper Group in 1965; it was sold again to the San Luis Valley Publishing Company in 1968. The publishing company broke up in 1993. Valley Publishing purchased the Journal and continues its publication, with Brian Williams acting as general manager and editor.

Provided by: History Colorado