The Colorado County Citizen
Columbus, Colorado County, Texas
Marker Inscription
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.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Established in 1857 by Ben, James, and Hicks Baker, this Columbus newspaper was christened by the Rev. J. J. Scherer, a local minister and educator. Over the decades it changed hands and titles, appearing as the Colorado Times and the Colorado Citizen from a series of sites. Of the several papers that served the county in the nineteenth century, it alone survived.
Why it matters
A frontier newspaper was a town's memory and its voice, and one that outlasted all its rivals marks the enduring role of the local press in binding a community together.
The story behind this marker
AI contextThe era
In 1857, Texas had been a state for only about a dozen years, and towns along its rivers were growing fast. Columbus sits on the Colorado River in a fertile stretch of country that drew cotton planters and a large wave of immigrants, including many German families who settled the surrounding counties in the 1840s and 1850s.
The late 1850s were also a tense time in national life. Arguments over slavery and its expansion were tearing the country apart, and within a few years Texas would secede and join the Confederacy. A newspaper founded in 1857 was born into that storm, with the Civil War only four years away.
On the frontier, a local newspaper was far more than a source of headlines. It carried legal notices, prices, steamboat and stage news, advertisements, sermons, poetry and political argument. In a world without radio or telegraph in every town, it was how a community talked to itself and learned about the wider world.
People & events
The paper was founded in 1857 by three Bakers: Ben, James and Hicks. Starting a newspaper in a young Texas town was a real gamble. Type, a press and paper all had to be hauled in, subscribers were few and scattered, and many frontier papers folded within a few years.
Its name came from the Rev. J. J. Scherer, a minister and educator. That detail says something about the town: the people who shaped its institutions, its churches, its schools and its press, often overlapped, and a newspaper's identity could come from a respected local figure in the pulpit or the schoolroom.
Over the decades the paper passed through a series of owners and moved through several locations. It appeared under different titles along the way, including the Colorado Times and the Colorado Citizen. Through all of that it kept publishing. Columbus had several newspapers in the 1800s, and this is the only one that survived.
Its place in the American story
Small-town newspapers are among the most valuable records of American history. Historians, genealogists and families turn to them to find births, marriages, deaths, land sales, elections and the everyday texture of life that never made it into national histories. A paper that has run continuously since 1857 holds a remarkably long thread of one community's memory.
The Citizen's survival is also a story about the American press as a whole. Across the country in the 1800s, newspapers rose and fell constantly, launched by printers, politicians and boosters and then shut down by debt, competition, fire or war. That one paper outlasted every local rival through the Civil War, Reconstruction and well beyond is a mark of unusual staying power.
Its history also reflects the ideal of a local free press. Every community deserves a voice of its own, and for well over a century readers in Colorado County have had one.
If you visit
Columbus is a handsome old river town, and the marker makes a good excuse to slow down and explore its historic streets. As you walk, think about how many of the events the town remembers were first written up and set in type for this paper.
If you are interested in family or local history, ask locally where older issues of the paper can be read. Historic newspapers are often preserved on microfilm or in digital archives, and browsing them is one of the most vivid ways to meet a town's past.
Columbus fits naturally into a road trip between Houston and San Antonio, and the surrounding countryside is known for its German heritage, old churches and small towns. A stop here pairs well with exploring the Colorado River valley at an unhurried pace.
Written by AI to add context, grounded in the marker’s inscription and the historical record. The inscription above is the original, unaltered text.
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Related people
- · Ben Baker
- · J. J. Scherer
Themes & tags
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