By Phil Roberts
Wyoming newspapers have been published under almost 500 names. Fewer than one-tenth that number are printed in the state today. Some were printed in mining camps like the Black Diamond and the Dillon Doublejack. Others like the Jireh Record and the Garland Guard were published in farm communities. Issues of these and almost every other paper ever published in Wyoming are in the collection of the WSAHD.
The Black Diamond was established in Carbon in 1891 and it was not unlike other weeklies published in small Wyoming towns in those days. Advertisements and “professional cards” adorned the front page along with numerous one-paragraph items about local people. The news items were interspersed with ads like “Drink Laramie Bottling Works’ Champagne Cider and Birch Beer. They are healthful and invigorating.”
The inside pages had editorials, more ads and “boilerplate”—long columns of short stories, serials or trivia, so named because it was sent to newspapers by a press service imprinted reverse image on long strips of solid metal, ready for placement in the type frames.
The Black Diamond folded in 1896 when it became apparent that Carbon soon would become a ghost town. It was not the only such victim of a bust.
The Jireh Record was first published April 1913 and publishers Forsythe and House explained why they believed Jireh’s paper would be a success: “In presenting the initial number of the Jireh Record….we believe that a long-felt want will be supplied to the Jireh community…The district is fast settling up and its advantages should be heralded to the world so that intending settlers or investors looking for opportunities may be attracted thereby.” The proximity of a college at Jireh also was a motivation. The Record lasted a little more than one year. The college and the town lasted a little longer.
Promotion of the area was often a prime motivation, but some newspapers solicited a specialized readership. The Colony Coyote, published by Cola W. Shepard in Crook County in the ‘teens, was “devoted to the interests of the Homesteader and his family.”
Subscriptions were as important then as today in showing advertisers that ads for their products were being seen by a large readership. The Garland Guard, a Park County newspaper, published contests rules offering a $55 sewing machine and “a shotgun worth $20” to the two people who sold the most Guard subscriptions (“no less than 25”). A check of later issues fails to disclose the names of the winners so perhaps the promotion met with only marginal success. (The Guard suspended publication in 1907, two years after the contest).
Subscription rates were not astronomical. The Burlington Post, published in Big Horn County, offered a yearly subscription for $2 “strictly cash in advance.” Below this listed rate the cost for a longer term: “one hundred years for $200.” There is no record of the number of 100-year subscribers or what happened to the 98 years remaining on their subscriptions when the paper closed down in 1906.
Editors accepted almost anything in return for subscriptions. An item in the Beulah Globe-News on November 29, 1890, is typical: “Any farmer who desires to subscribe for the Globe-News and finds it hard to dig up cash, can pay for the same in meat, grain, vegetables or wood.”
The derivations of many of the strange names have been lost to history. A few were explained in their first issues. C. W. Williams in the first issue of the Hartville Uplift, February 19, 1910, wrote: “I have called it the Hartville Uplift after the geological term applied to the minerally rich range of hills.” He added that “the rancher…merchant and businessman will be accorded as much space in these columns as though the paper bore the usual title, the Evening Cheese.” C. P. Diehl in the first issue of the Diamondville News more than 10 years earlier had written: “With the first issue of a new publication it is unusually customary to write a long introductory editorial… We can state our excuse for existence in a very few words: As the title of this paper indicates, our chief mission will be to furnish the news as we find it; also to give businessmen a medium for advertising purposes and further, we shall attempt to make a business success for ourselves.” The News suspended publication two years later.