Killeen Herald

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm passing it right along to you. Back in June of 1890, a man named W.E. Bennett sat down and started publishin' a little paper called the Killeen Herald.

Now, Killeen itself had only been founded eight years before that, so this was still a young town finding its footing, and Bennett was already putting its story down on paper. Week by week, that's how it went. A weekly publication, modest and steady, just like the town around it.

Then the paper changed hands. W.T. Carter came into the picture, an active civic leader, and he took on the roles of both publisher and editor.

He held those positions from 1907 all the way to 1950. That is not a short stint. That is a life's work poured into a single publication, watching a community shift and grow and be recorded.

And the Herald kept growing too. By 1953, it had made the leap from weekly to daily. More news, more pages, more of Killeen's story told every single day.

Now here's the thing that makes you stop and think. Of all the businesses that ever hung a shingle in Killeen, through booms and quiet spells and everything the years could throw at a Texas town, the Killeen Herald is the oldest privately owned and continuously operated business enterprise in the entire city. It has never stopped.

It just kept going, kept chronicling, kept showing up. W.E. Bennett probably couldn't have imagined all of that in June of 1890.

But he started the paper anyway. And sometimes, that's all it takes.

What the marker says

W.E. Bennett began publishing the Killeen Herald in June 1890, eight years after the town of Killeen was founded. Later owners of the newspaper included W.T. Carter, an active civic leader who served as publisher and editor from 1907 to 1950. Begun as a weekly publication, the Herald has been a daily paper since 1953. From the earliest days of Killeen, the Herald has grown with the town and has chronicled the area's dynamic progress. It is now the oldest privately owned and continuously operated business enterprise in the city of Killeen. (1990)