Kerrville Mountain Sun

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll pass it along just the same way. You know, every town worth its salt has a newspaper, and Kerrville's goes back further than most folks think to reckon. It all starts sometime in the 1870s, with a publication called The Frontiersman.

Now that is a name with some swagger to it. But nothing stays the same forever, and over the years that paper kept reinventing itself, passing through names like a traveler passing through towns. The News.

The Eye. The Paper. Each one a little less dramatic than the last, if you ask me.

Then along comes J. E. Grinstead.

The marker calls him an adventurer, a writer, and an early photographer, which is about as interesting a combination as you could hang on one man. Grinstead bought the paper in 1898, and when he did, he gave it the name that stuck. The Mountain Sun.

He held onto it, put his mark on it, and then in 1917 he sold it and moved on, the way adventurers tend to do. Two years later, in 1919, the paper came under the full ownership of two brothers, W. A. and Clarence Salter.

And here is where the story gets its real weight. Because the marker tells you, right there carved into the base, that the wife, the son, and the grandson of W. A.

Salter all continued that ownership. A newspaper that started as The Frontiersman, survived every name change the frontier could throw at it, and ended up a family legacy. That is a Kerrville story if I ever heard one.

What the marker says

The "Kerrville Mountain Sun" can trace its history to an 1870s publication known as "The Frontiersman." Later called "The News," "The Eye," and "The Paper," the "Mountain Sun" was given its current name by J. E. Grinstead after he purchased the newspaper in 1898. An adventurer, writer, and early photographer, Grinstead sold the "Mountain Sun" in 1917. In 1919 it came under the full ownership of brothers W. A. and Clarence Salter. Over the years, the "Kerrville Mountain Sun" has provided a significant service to the citizens of Kerrville. Texas Sesquicentennial 1836-1986 Incise on base: Wife, son, grandson of W. A. Salter have continued ownership