The Monte Vista Journal (Monte Vista, Rio Grande County, Colo.)
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
1,153 issues from 1897 to 1920, published in Monte Vista, Colorado, digitised for Chronicling America.
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…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Monte Vista, 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