The Clarendon News
Clarendon, Donley County, Texas
Marker Inscription
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)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Clarendon began as the Rev. Lewis H. Carhart's dream of a colony grounded in Christianity, temperance, and education, and to promote it he launched The Clarendon News in June 1878—the very year the first colonists arrived. It was the first newspaper in the Texas Panhandle. Through many changes of name and owner, and from hand-set type to modern computers, it has never stopped chronicling its community.
Why it matters
As the Panhandle's first newspaper, it embodies the press's role in willing frontier towns into being and holding scattered settlers together as a community.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In 1878 the Texas Panhandle was one of the last great open spaces in the American West. Only a few years earlier it had been the homeland of the Comanche and Kiowa. After the Red River War of 1874–75 forced them onto reservations, and after the buffalo herds were destroyed by commercial hunting, the high plains opened quickly to cattlemen and then to settlers.
It was rough country for anyone hoping to build a town. There were no railroads yet, very few roads, and long distances between ranch headquarters. Big cattle ranches were starting up across the region, and the cowboys who worked them were not known for clean living. Most settlements on the frontier began as trading posts, cow towns, or railroad stops, and they grew without much of a plan.
Clarendon began differently. It was planned as a colony with a purpose, and its founder knew that a town needed people before it could exist. In the 1800s a newspaper was the strongest promotional tool a town booster had. A paper told the outside world that a place was real, settled, and worth moving to.
People & events
The man behind it all was the Rev. Lewis H. Carhart, a minister who imagined a Panhandle settlement built on Christianity, temperance, and education. That was a bold idea for a region better known for cattle drives than church suppers. He did more than preach about it. He set out to recruit colonists who shared his values.
To spread the word, Carhart started The Clarendon News, and the first issue appeared in June 1878. That was the same year the first colonists arrived, so the paper and the town grew up together. With that first issue, the News became the first newspaper in the Panhandle, a printed voice for a place that had barely been mapped by settlers.
The colony's earnest, churchgoing character got noticed. Local cowboys famously gave Clarendon the teasing nickname "Saints' Roost," a name the town still remembers fondly. Over the decades the newspaper changed owners and names many times. It kept going anyway, reporting on births, deaths, weddings, harvests, and the ordinary business of a small community.
The tools changed completely along the way. Early printers set each letter by hand, one piece of metal type at a time. Their successors moved to faster presses and later to computers. Through every change, a string of pioneer journalists kept the paper going, and that long, unbroken run is the legacy the marker honors.
Its place in the American story
Across the American frontier, newspapers often showed up before the towns they promised. Editors and boosters printed papers to attract settlers, investors, and railroads, and sometimes the paper existed mainly to make a town look more established than it was. The Clarendon News fits that pattern well, since it was founded specifically to promote a settlement.
It is also an example of a distinctly American kind of colony: the planned community built around a moral or religious ideal. Temperance colonies and church-centered settlements appeared all over the country in the 1800s, as reformers tried to build better societies on new land. Clarendon carried that idea onto the High Plains.
Above all, the paper's survival says something about small-town journalism. Local newspapers have been the main record of American community life for generations, and many of them have disappeared in recent decades. A paper that has covered its town since the 1870s is part of a tradition that is becoming rare.
If you visit
Clarendon sits in the rolling country of Donley County in the eastern Panhandle, the kind of place where the sky seems to take up most of the view. It is an easy stop on a road trip across the Texas plains, and it gives you a good sense of how isolated those first colonists must have felt.
When you stand at the marker, picture the first issue of the paper rolling off a hand-operated press in 1878 with only a few settlers around. Then think about how many generations of local news have been printed since. If you see a copy of the local paper for sale in town, pick one up. You'd be reading the latest page of a story that began with Carhart.
Take your time looking around town. Look for older buildings and churches that echo the colony's founding ideals, and think about the "Saints' Roost" nickname as you go. Clarendon pairs well with other Panhandle stops focused on ranching and frontier history, so it fits nicely into a longer drive through the region.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Rev. Lewis H. Carhart
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
State National Bank
Groom, TX
State National Bank opened in 1904 as a private bank founded by John Walter Knorpp, of an established Missouri and Southwestern banking family, together with regional oil and grain developer Eugene S. Blasdel. Chartered by the state in 1908 and nationally from 1926, it drew its strength from the thrifty settlers and pioneer families of the Panhandle. The bank weathered the Panic of 1907, the Dust Bowl, and two world wars while backing the region's cattle, grain, and oil economy.
Armstrong County
Claude, TX
Carved out of the Texas Panhandle in 1876 and named for a family of pioneer Armstrongs, this county was cattle country from the start—the sprawling JA Ranch was founded the very same year. When the railroad arrived in 1887 it opened the plains to farmers, and the county formally organized in 1890, raising its stately courthouse in 1912.
Rocking Chair "Ranche" (1883-1893)
Collingsworth County, TX
The Rocking Chair Ranch was a grand experiment in absentee ownership: financed by the Scottish Earls of Aberdeen and Tweedmouth, it ran from 1883 to 1893 out of a headquarters called Aberdeen. Beginning with nearly 15,000 cattle, it turned a profit for a few years before faltering, and the town of Wellington was named at the owners' wish to honor a kinsman who died as an aide to the Duke of Wellington at Waterloo. W. E. Hughes bought the land in 1893, folding it into the Mill Iron Ranch before it was eventually broken into farms and smaller ranches.
White Deer
White Deer, TX
White Deer took its name from a creek and an Indian legend of white deer that fed there. The county's first water well was drilled at the N Bar N Ranch in 1887, and the site served as headquarters for the White Deer Land Co., successor to a British syndicate that held 630,000 Panhandle acres before selling them off for farms in 1902. The arrival of the railroad and, later, a 1920s oil boom turned it into a shipping town for grain and cattle.