Eastern Colorado Times Archive

The first issue of the Eastern Colorado Times was published on March 29, 1912, with the following proclamation: "That this paper will be progressive, goes without saying. That it will stand for all things that tend to improve agricultural and business interests of Cheyenne county and Eastern Colorado, is a foregone conclusion." The paper was originally founded in Calhan, Colorado, as the Divide Farmer in 1906, but in 1912 H.Y. Tarwater and Walter L. Bales purchased the Divide Farmer's plant and subscription list and moved the operation 120 miles east to Cheyenne Wells, one of the older towns on the Kansas Pacific railway. The weekly paper was decidedly Democratic in "belief, practice and principle," although it would be run "just as much for the interest of the republican, socialist, prohibition, social labor in everything and on every question pertaining to the public good, without regard to party, place or power."

Walter Bales, the first editor of the Times, left his position at a paper in Kiowa, Colorado, and took up 160 acres outside of Cheyenne Wells. In a letter to the editor of the Craig Empire in February 1913, Bales confessed that his experience as a farmer did not prove profitable as he had spent his life in the newspaper business: "As there was a Democratic paper in Cheyenne Wells...that needed a doctor, and as I myself needed work that would prove remunerative, I took the position of editor of the Eastern Colorado Times." In the same letter, Bales complained of the partisan dealings of the local land office that required that he publish the final notice of his intention to prove up his homestead in the rival Republican paper. According to Bales, "The said Republican editor, with a greed born of his class, did not extend editorial courtesy to me, but charged me for the publication of this notice which could just as well have gone in my papers." By the time Bales wrote this letter, he already had moved to Excelsior Springs, Missouri, and taken up the editorship of the Excelsior Standard.

According to Colorado Newspapers: A History & Inventory by Jane C. Harper, Craig W. Leavitt, and Thomas J. Noel, H.Y. Tarwater leased the Eastern Colorado Times to C.T. Bogert in August 1913. Bogert bought the paper outright and renamed it the Cheyenne Record the following month. Bogert acted as editor until March 1921, when he sold the Record to R.J. Goldsworthy, who then changed its name to the Cheyenne Wells Record which he published until 1939. Goldsworthy bought the Oak Creek Times, leaving publication of theRecord to his wife, who later remarried and published the paper under the name E.B. Dowd until 1944 when she suspended publication.

The Cheyenne Wells Record was revived in April 1945 and published by the Larmon family until 1969, when it was sold to Rodney J. Dent. Dent had also purchased the Kit Carson Press, which he merged with the Cheyenne Wells Record to form the Range Ledger and the Cheyenne Wells Record under which name it publishes today.