The Colorado County Citizen

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about this one. Now, picture a small Texas town in 1857, and three brothers, Ben, James, and Hicks Baker, deciding the world needs to hear what Colorado County has to say. So they establish a paper.

That's the beginning of the Colorado County Citizen. But here's a detail worth savoring: the name wasn't the brothers' doing. The man who named it was the Reverend J.

J. Scherer, a minister and educator both, which means the paper got its title from a man who spent his life tending to souls and shaping minds. Not a bad pedigree for a name.

Over the years the paper traveled, published on several different sites, passed through a series of owners, and wore different names along the way, sometimes going by the Colorado Times, sometimes the Colorado Citizens. The thing about newspapers in small Texas towns in the 1800s is that most of them didn't make it. They folded, faded, dried up like creek beds in August.

Several local papers came and went right there in Colorado County during that era. Every last one of them, gone. Every one, that is, except this one.

The Colorado County Citizen, named by a preacher, founded by three brothers, is the only survivor among the several local papers of that century. Some stories just refuse to stop being told.

What the marker says

Established 1857 by Ben, James, and Hicks Baker, the "Citizens" was named by the Rev. J. J. Scherer, minister-educator. Also published on several sites, by series of owners, as "Colorado Times" or "Colorado Citizens," this is only survivor among the several local 1800s papers.