The Clarendon News

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Now, most towns out here on the Panhandle just kind of happened, but Clarendon, well, Clarendon was a project. A deliberate, purposeful, God-fearing project, and the man behind it was the Reverend Lewis H.

Carhart. He had a vision, a colony built on three pillars: Christianity, temperance, and education. And if you're going to build something like that out on the wide-open Texas Panhandle, you're going to need people to know about it.

So Reverend Carhart did what any determined founder would do. He started a newspaper. The Clarendon News, first issue printed in June of 1878, the very same year the first colonists arrived.

Now pause on that for a second. The ink was barely dry on the first edition before the wagons started rolling in. That is confidence.

That is faith. And here's the thing that gives that little paper its place in the history books: it was the first newspaper in the entire Panhandle. Not just Clarendon's paper.

The Panhandle's paper. The first one anybody out here ever had. Now, nothing stays the same forever, and The Clarendon News sure didn't.

It changed owners. It changed names. More than once, more than a few times, truth be told.

But through all of it, through every new hand on the press and every new name on the masthead, it kept doing the one thing it was always meant to do: covering the community, telling the local story, giving people something to hold in their hands and say, this is us, this is what happened here. And the printing itself changed right along with the times, from the slow, patient work of hand-set type all the way to the computer innovations of the twenty-first century. That's a long road from a frontier colony to a digital newsroom, and The Clarendon News traveled every mile of it.

The marker calls that long, continuous run a tribute, a tribute to Reverend Carhart and to the many pioneer journalists who came after him. And that word, tribute, that's exactly right. Because somewhere in every issue of that paper, no matter whose name is on the door, there's still a little echo of a minister with a mission and a printing press and a brand-new colony that needed a voice.

What the marker says

The Clarendon News The town of Clarendon began with an effort led by the Rev. Lewis H. Carhart as he strived to create a colony based on Christianity, temperance and education. To promote the settlement, he created The Clarendon News, publishing the first issue in June 1878, the same year the first colonists arrived. The News was the first newspaper in the Panhandle. Since its first printing, it has changed owners and names many times but has always provided local news coverage and community interest pieces. As the community grew, printing methods changed from hand-set type to 21st-century computer innovations. The newspaper's long, continuous run is a tribute to Carhart and the many pioneer journalists who followed him. (2003)