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Historian reflects on Rocky's moving days

Contributed by: Richard Gardner on 8/5/2006

Saturdaywas the first of several moving daysfor the Rocky Mountain News to its new headquarters at Colfax and Broadway. This will be the 12th home of the Rocky, Colorado's first and oldest newspaper, first printed on April 23, 1859, by William Newton Byers.

I certainly hope this move won't be as eventful as others in its past. The first home of the News was in the upstairs of Dick Wootton's saloon in the town of Auraria, where the campus now lies. Here stray bullets, whether inadvertent or counter-editorializing, often came up from downstairs, prompting the editor to lay down additional flooring.

To placate the rowdy gold rush towns of Auraria and Denver on the other side of Cherry Creek, Byers made the News' first move, to neutral ground - an island in the middle of Cherry Creek. It was politically quite expedient, but in other ways not so wise, as the paper's second move came in 1864, courtesy the turbulent floodwaters of Cherry Creek. The printing press has not been found to this day.

As a housewarming present I thought I might give the Rocky the story of the first extra edition they ever printed, at that original home above the saloon, as told by Golden's own George West, the man who printed it for Byers. Newcomer and already prominent reporter Horace Greeley had come to investigate the news of the gold finds in the hills for himself, and apparently the news he found caused the News printing staff to head for the hills. Byers was in a tight spot.

Then on June 10, 1859 a wagon train of newcomers, including a group of seven men known as the Boston Company, arrived at Cherry Creek. Their wagon proceeded to where Market Street crosses the river. From here on the story is well-told by West, in 1883 in his Colorado Transcript:

We was that day acting in the capacity of engineer of one of the bull-teams in the train, it requiring considerable skill to induce the tired oxen to pull the wagon through the foot or more of sand in the bed of the creek. As we pulled out on the western bank and halted a moment to give the oxen a rest the stentorian voice of Uncle Tommy Gibson rang out upon the ambient air from a little foot bridge which then spanned the creek. The words that reached our ears were "Hey, there! Are there any printers in that crowd?"

The answer went back to him "yes sir, there are three of us here!"

A bright smile spread over the honest phiz of the old man as he shouted back "Good enough! I've got an extra to set up, and I wish you would go into camp over here and come in and help us out."

As it was Saturday afternoon and pretty near camping time, we did not object, so Bill Sumner, Mark Blunt now of the Pueblo Land office and the writer proceeded to the old rough-log office of the Rocky Mountain News after investigating the irrigation question at Jack O'Neil's saloon next door, at Gibson's expense. Here we found Horace Greeley, Henry Villard and A.D. Richardson, who had just returned from the "Gregory diggings," preparing their report of what they had seen there.

We three pilgrims rolled up our sleeves and "threw in" our cases, while Villard and Richardson prepared the copy from Greeley's notes and their own. In the course of an hour or two the matter was set up, and the writer worked off the celebrated extra on the hand-press - the only press then in the office, while Mark Blunt rolled the forms.

This extra dated June 13, 1859, of which West printed 500 copies, would become famous for confirming the gold strikes in the mountains, turning the gold rush from a trickle to a torrent and bringing many to Colorado. Gibson liberally paid his guest printers on the 12th with 5 pennyweight of gold dust, and they went on their way. Later that day they arrived in the valley of the foothills on the banks of Clear Creek, and four days later helped found Golden City there.

They established Golden's first business, the Boston Company, and there established Colorado's 4th newspaper, the Western Mountaineer, which playfully sparred with Byers and assistant editor Edward Bliss. The friendships formed that day in June 1859 would remain unbroken, and when fellow Goldenite William A.H. Loveland bought the Rocky to become its second owner in 1878, West offered this fitting remembrance:

Last Saturday's Rocky Mountain News contained the valedictory of Wm. N. Byers, who retired from the editorial control of that paper, and announces also that his pecuniary interest in the establishment ceases from that date, after an uninterrupted connection with it from the start nineteen years ago this spring. Although we have never been able to agree with Mr. Byers' political tenets, or with his moral and religious views, we confess to a liking for the old News that it is hard to put aside; as the old times of '59 and later come to our memory with a peculiar vividness.

It was to the old log office of the News on Ferry street, Auraria, now West Denver, that we earned our first dollar in "Pike's Peak," with two other printers of our party just off the plains - Mark Blunt and Bill Summer - by setting up an extra containing the report of a visit of Horace Greeley, A.D. Richardson and Henry Villard to the "Gregory Diggings." This was on the 10th of June 1859, and the News was then published by Byers & Gibson.

The following fall we started the Western Mountaineer at Golden, and during the ensuing year had many a tilt with the "Old Reliable." During '61, while "skinning mules" upon the plains, and afterwards "for three years or during the war," it was the medium through which we aired our "vague fancies and fanciful facts," as the redoubtable Sniktau used to call them, relating in our crude style through its columns many lively incidents of life on the plains, and when we had heard of battles, and followed to the field the warlike Ford, the News seemed always glad to publish our rough sketches of battles and skirmishes we were in.

"When the cruel war was over," and we returned to our mountain home dead broke (we were not a quartermaster) and stopped our old blacktopped ambulance in front of the old News office on Larimer street on that hot afternoon in July '65 to say "How!" to the boys, we were incontinently bounced by the then proprietors - Byers and Dailey - to take the position of local editor of the News.

Did we take it? You bet the last dollar you have got in the world we took it, and stuck to it like a puppy to a root until the fall of '66, when we started the TRANSCRIPT here in Golden, on our own hook. These personal reminiscences may not be of interest to our readers of today, but they have welled up in spite of us, and out they had to come.

Byers and the Rocky Mountain News have been synonymous names so long in the history of "Pike's Peak" that it seems like breaking a link in the chain of that history to separate them. The paper is now published by the News Printing Co., with W.B. Vickers, K.G. Cooper and W.F. Robinson "to the fore," and may its shadow never grow less is the wish of one who never missed a copy or paid a cent for it if he could help it.


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Showing 1-2 of 2 comments
Submitted By: Fairlight Baer-Gutierrez
posted on 8/8/2006 @ 8:11:40 AM
Rated Story
Thank you for this wonderful housewarming gift! There is talk of a pub being on the first floor of the new building, so we'll be on watch for those stray bullets.
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Submitted By: Karen Groves
posted on 8/7/2006 @ 8:36:28 AM
Rated Story
Great story in the history of regional news.
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Showing 1-2 of 2 comments
CONTRIBUTOR INFORMATION

Richard Gardner

Golden , CO

Richard Gardner has posted 101 stories and 1 comment since joining on 9/15/2005. Richard Gardner 's average story rating is 4.95.
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