Canon City Record Archive

Cañon City, located in Fremont County, Colorado, was established in 1859 and thrived in the 1860s as a stop along the way to the gold diggings in Leadville. In 1868, Cañon City was designated as the location for the territorial and, later, the state penitentiary, which opened in 1871. The Cañon City Record began as the Cañon City Avalanche in 1875 by Dr. Isaac E. Thayer. The paper was purchased in April 1878 by brothers H.M. and Saxe Cramer and renamed The Fremont County Record. In 1880, H.T. Blake bought the Record and Saxe Cramer stayed on as the local editor. Judge Wilbur B. Felton purchased the entire interest in the paper from Blake in 1883 and changed its name to the Cañon City Record. Previous to running the Record, Felton had been editor and publisher of the Saguache Chronicle. He was also a member of the Constitutional Convention in 1875, a charter member of the Colorado State Press Association, and warden of the state penitentiary. Art Frisbie owned the Record between 1892 and 1895. According to Colorado Newspapers: A History & Inventory, 1859-2000 (Jane C. Harper, Craig W. Leavitt, and Thomas J. Noel), Guy Urban Hardy, a reporter for the Record, said that Frisbie, an aspiring politician, kept an "S.A. Book--' satisfaction assured' for polite reference, in which he kept the record of those who had done him wrong."

Hardy went on to become editor and publisher of the Record in 1895 until his death in 1947. Telluide's The Daily Journal enthused that under Hardy's editorship the Record was "[m]echanically and typographically...a model of the art preservative of arts...a most interesting newspaper, and a thing of beauty to look upon." On March 1, 1903, a fire broke out in the composing room of the Record, destroying its type, a Simplex typesetting machine, and other equipment. The Cañon City Clipper offered Hardy use of its presses so that the Record could continue publication without interruption. The March 19, 1903 edition was produced back in its own office, noting that "the Record is ready to again take its place among foremost country newspapers." The paper covered state and local news, items of interest concerning the administration of the penitentiary and its population, and occasional special editions, such as the 1903 Easter issue written and edited exclusively by the women of Christ's Episcopal Church of Cañon City. In 1906, Hardy added the Cañon City Daily Record alongside the weekly Record. By 1911, Hardy purchased the Cañon City Cannon and eventually, in 1921, the other remaining local paper, The Fremont County Leader, and consolidated both with the Record.

The Record was initially independent in politics; however, under the proprietorship of Judge Felton, it became affiliated with the Republican Party. Under Hardy, the Record was one of only three Colorado newspapers that endorsed William McKinley in the 1896 presidential election. Hardy, himself, was elected in 1919 as a Republican to the U.S. House of Representatives and represented Colorado in Congress until 1933. The Ku Klux Klan, which had powerful influence in Cañon City, boycotted Hardy's publication in the 1920s. Despite the considerable loss of revenue stemming from the boycott, the weekly Cañon City Record continued publication and was published "out of sentiment" until 1969 under the proprietorship of Guy Hardy's son, Don, after whose death his son David Hardy took over.