About Semi-weekly herald. [volume] (Durango, Colo.) 1907-1917
Durango, Colo. (1907-1917)

Durango Semi-Weekly Herald and Semi-Weekly Herald

Located in southwest Colorado, Durango is the seat of La Plata County. The area was originally occupied by Ancestral Pueblo peoples and later by the Weenuche, Capote, and Muache Utes. White settlement of the area began in the 1860s after small gold deposits were discovered, and by the 1870s there were multiple gold and silver mining operations in the surrounding San Juan Mountains. Durango became the major supply, processing, and shipping depot for the mines.

The first iteration of the Durango Herald was established by Jerome L. Marsh and his son, George, in July 1881. The Lake City Mining Register of July 15, 1881, complimented the paper as a "handsome, five-column quarto" that gave "evidence of being in the hands of gentlemen who understand the newspaper business." C. Sum Nichols purchased a half-interest in the Herald in January 1887. Jerome Marsh and Nichols published the Republican-leaning Herald together as a daily, but by May of the same year, Nichols's name alone was printed as the president and manager of the paper. The Pueblo [Colorado] Daily Chieftain reported that there had been "trouble in the camp between Nichols and Marsh" and intimated that Marsh had "fired himself" (May 6, 1887). The Gunnison Review-Press of July 9, 1887, reprinted from the exchange this harsh assessment of C. Sum Nichols's management of the Herald.

The Durango Herald will abandon its Associated Press report … and will go on robbing the Denver papers like the rest of its more esteemed contemporaries. Slowly but surely the coil is tightening about the short ribs of this managerical asininity. Slum [Sum] should have embraced the opportunity when the circus was in town to resume his position as chambermaid in the elephant car.

The Herald was sold to brothers George N. and Solomon W. Raymond in September 1887. They published the weekly Herald as well as a daily, the Durango Evening Herald. By 1899, the Durango Herald added the Durango Semi-Weekly Herald. The Silver Star of Dolores, Colorado, had strong words for the Raymonds' editorial style, suggesting that George Raymond must have been "Durango's city scavenger, from the smell of the stuff he uses to fill the space in the Herald" and was "something his town should be proud of as the average person is of a cesspool or a skunk" (October 20, 1899). Insults aside, the Raymonds continued publishing the paper until 1910, changing the papers' names to the Semi-Weekly Herald, published on Mondays, and the Durango Weekly Herald, published on Thursdays.

In October 1910, the Raymonds sold the papers to William A. Bartlett, a newspaperman who had worked both in Denver and Cheyenne, Wyoming. Bartlett did not stay at the helm of the Herald for long, selling it to George B. Munson in December of the same year. According to the San Miguel Examiner, Bartlett "could not swing the outfit after he bought it" and was an "inveterate gambler, blowing in all that he could get his hands on" (January 28, 1911). After about a year at the Herald, during which Munson was embroiled in a criminal libel case in which he was sued for $20,000 in damages (the case seems to have been dismissed), Munson retired. He was succeeded as editor by Ira J. Bradford. Bradford was a newspaper man from Alamosa, Colorado, where he had "won considerable distinction in the journalistic field" (Alamosa Empire, printed in the Semi-Weekly Herald, April 1, 1912).

During these editorial upheavals, the Raymonds appeared to have held the mortgage of the paper, doing business as the Herald Printing Company. However, in February 1916, John Henry McDevitt purchased the Herald, printing and publishing plant and all. He joined Bradford as an editor. The Weekly Ignacio Chieftain reported that the two published a "newspaper the people of that city should appreciate, considering from a news standpoint. They realize that an uncolored press report and a clean conservative digest of local happenings are the essentials of an ideal newspaper" (February 18, 1916). The publication of the Semi-Weekly Herald ended in 1917, but the weekly edition continued through the 1920s under the editorship of McDevitt's son, J. H. McDevitt (1922–1925), and Irena S. Ingham (1924–1929). In 1928, McDevitt purchased the Durango Democrat and merged the titles to form the Durango Herald-Democrat.

Provided by: History Colorado