Staked Plains

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Way out here in Midland County, before the paved roads and the pump jacks, before just about anything you'd call a town infrastructure, somebody decided what this place needed was a newspaper. That somebody was J.

C. Rathbun, editor and publisher, and in 1885 he set up shop in a frame building right on this very site. Now I want you to picture that operation, because it was something.

Every single copy of that paper was hand-set. Every letter, every word, every headline, picked up by hand and placed into the press. And then hand printed.

All of it. At a rate of five copies per hour. Five.

You let that number sit with you for a second. Five copies an hour. If you needed the news in Midland County in 1885, you were going to wait for it.

The county court proceedings ran in those pages too, billed out at seventy-five cents per square inch, which tells you this was a real operation with real business attached to it. Not a hobby. Not a lark.

The first newspaper ever published in Midland County, born in a frame building, coaxed to life one hand-set letter at a time on an old-style press, by one man with ink on his fingers and apparently all the patience in West Texas. J. C.

Rathbun gave this county its first printed word. Five copies an hour. Some things are worth doing slow.

What the marker says

First newspaper published in Midland County. Printed in 1885 in frame building once on this site. Copies were hand-set and hand printed at rate of 5 per hour on old-style press. County court proceedings were printed at .75 cent per square inch. J. C. Rathbun was editor and publisher. (1970)