The Lamar Register (Lamar, Colo.)
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
1,753 issues from 1889 to 1923, published in Lamar, Colorado, digitised for Chronicling America.
The Bent County Register began as a weekly publication in June 1886 in the fever of the real estate boom precipitated by the founding of Lamar, Colorado. Located in the fertile valley of the Arkansas River in southeastern Colorado, and attractive to both cattlemen and farmers looking to move west from Kansas, the town of Lamar sprouted up literally overnight between May 23 and 24, 1886. Real estate investor I.R. Holmes and Santa Fe railroad man Colonel A.S. Johnson secured a deed to land along the Santa Fe line and spread the word that the opening sale of town lots would take place on May 24, 1886. By means of subterfuge, a train depot was taken off its foundations and relocated by rail to the new town site in time to accommodate the “boom train” arriving from Garden City, Kansas. Among the passengers arriving the following day were investors who purchased over $45,000 in town lots, doing business in a tent serving as Lamar’s makeshift headquarters. The town was officially established on May 24, 1886, with many of the same investors deciding to immediately take up residence, ordering building materials by telegraph.
One of the early settlers who flocked to Lamar was Judge W.R. Davis, of Dodge City, Kansas, who alit from the train on June 7, 1886, with an antiquated printing outfit. Davis rented space with a floor and walls (no roof) and opened the Bent County Register. The first issue of the newspaper was published on June 12, 1886, during a driving rainstorm. It was so…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Lamar, Colorado, United States
- Language
- English
- Collection
- Chronicling America
- Licence or status
- None stated by the archive
- Rights
- The Library of Congress believes that the newspapers in Chronicling America are in the public domain or have no known copyright restrictions. Newspapers published in the United States more than 95 years ago are in the public domain in their entirety.
- Credit
- Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities
- Who can read it
- Teens profiles and older (placed by Invisible Network from what the archive says; archives give no ratings)
- Archive
- Library of Congress