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Chronicling America
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Newspaper Daily Camera (Boulder, Colo.) 1891-1928 Daily camera extra

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About Daily Camera (Boulder, Colo.) 1891-1928

Boulder, Colorado, was founded during the Colorado Gold Rush of the late 1850s. In 1861, the University of Colorado was established there. Before white settlement, the land had been the traditional homeland of the Ute people since the sixteenth century. By the early nineteenth century, the Arapaho joined the Ute in the area; however, they were removed to the Cheyenne-Arapaho Reservation following the increase of mining and other white activities and the formation of Boulder County in 1861. Black settlers came to Boulder after the Civil War, as formerly enslaved people and their descendants moved west. The Colorado Central and the Denver & Boulder Valley railroads arrived in the 1870s, supporting the town as it became a center of commerce and education. By the early 1900s, Boulder was calling itself “the Athens of the West.”

The Boulder Daily Camera was founded in 1891 by Bert Ball and Frederick Patterson Johnson and printed on a press obtained from The Rocky Mountain News. It was absorbed in 1892 by The Boulder Tribune, which was owned by “Colonel” Lucius Carver Paddock and Valentine Butsch. The Boulder Tribune and the Camera continued as weekly and daily publications, respectively. They were published by the Boulder Publishing Company, the first newspaper incorporation in Colorado, under Butsch, Johnson, and Paddock. The Camera printed reports from the United Press and aspired to “give in brief all the news transmitted by this great agency.” It promised that “no pains are spared to render its local columns a complete epitome of each day’s transactions in the business and social life of Boulder and Boulder County” (May 23, 1893).

A fire in January 1895 destroyed early copies of the Camera, and for a time Paddock edited the paper from an undertaker’s shop. By April, it was “back in its old quarters, which have been so fitted up as to combine convenience with comfort, and the Camera is better prepared to get out a good paper than ever before” (The Denver Times in The Daily Camera, April 9, 1895). By 1901, the newspaper’s situation had improved to the point that The Fort Collins Courier noted:

Boulder should be proud of so large, so well filled and so ably conducted a daily as the Camera is now. Its lenses are big enough now to take in the whole situation and the plate, when developed under the colonel’s discriminating eye, exhibits every feature of the day’s doings (May 23, 1901).

Although the Camera was initially listed in 1893 by N.W. Ayer & Son’s American Newspaper Annual as an independent publication, it reflected the views of the staunchly Democratic Paddock to such an extent that The Lafayette Leader archly referred to it as the “Boulder Kodak, the official democratic viewbox of this county” (August 30, 1906).

Paddock was a well-regarded editor and, according to the Estes Park Trail, combined “remarkable wit with a fearlessness and punch that [made] him one of the most widely quoted editors of the state” (November 22, 1929). An example of Paddock’s quotable fearlessness was published in The Steamboat Pilot: “The people could laugh the Ku Klux Klan out of existence if its members had any sense of humor. The tragedy of it is that they don’t know how ridiculous they are” (August 13, 1924).

“Colonel” L. C. Paddock, “young in heart, enthusiastic as ever in his newspaper work, progressive and far seeing as always in the maintenance and improvement of his influential Boulder Daily Camera” (The Record Journal of Douglas County, June 16, 1939), died in 1940, after 56 years at the helm of the Camera. His son, “Gov” Alva Adams Paddock, who joined the staff of the Camera in 1910, succeeded him as publisher. Under A. A. Paddock, the edition of March 13, 1947, won a prestigious award: the F.W. Ayer Award for best typography and press work among newspapers of less than 10,000 circulation (Colorado Newspapers: A History & Inventory, 1859-2000, Jane C. Harper, Craig W. Leavitt, and Thomas J. Noel, 2014).

A. A. Paddock died in 1961, after a 52-year career with the Camera. Paddock’s wife, Annie Laurie, succeeded him as president of the publishing company. His son, Laurie, took over the editorship of the Camera in 1960 and held that position until his retirement in 1992. During that time the paper was sold to Ridder Publications, now Knight-Ridder. Later the Camera was traded by Knight-Ridder to the E. W. Scripps Company. The paper is still in publication under Al Manzi.

Provided By: History Colorado

About this Newspaper

Title

  • Daily Camera (Boulder, Colo.) 1891-1928

Other Title

  • Daily camera extra

Dates of Publication

  • 1891-1928

Created / Published

  • Boulder, Colo. : Boulder Pub. Co.

Headings

  • -  United States--Colorado--Boulder--Boulder

Notes

  • -  Daily (except Mon.)
  • -  Began in 1891?
  • -  -3rd year, no. 204 (Aug. 27, 1894); v. 4, no. 205 (Aug. 28, 1894)- ; -37th year, no. 267 (Jan. 27, 1928).
  • -  Title varies slightly.
  • -  Additional issue on Wednesday has title: Daily camera extra.
  • -  Available on microfilm from the Colorado Historical Society.
  • -  Description based on: 1st year, no. 67 (June 2, 1891).
  • -  Boulder daily camera (DLC)sn 89052198

Medium

  • volumes

Call Number/Physical Location

  • AN3 .D3

Digital Id

Library of Congress Control Number

  • sn84002889

OCLC Number

  • 3511682

ISSN Number

  • 0746-8733

Preceding Titles

Succeeding Titles

Additional Metadata Formats

Availability

Rights & Access

The Library of Congress believes that the newspapers in Chronicling America are in the public domain or have no known copyright restrictions. Newspapers published in the United States more than 95 years ago are in the public domain in their entirety. Any newspapers in Chronicling America that were published less than 95 years ago are also believed to be in the public domain, but may contain some copyrighted third party materials. Researchers using newspapers published less than 95 years ago should be alert for modern content (for example, registered and renewed for copyright and published with notice) that may be copyrighted. Responsibility for making an independent legal assessment of an item and securing any necessary permissions ultimately rests with persons desiring to use the item.

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Cite This Item

Citations are generated automatically from bibliographic data as a convenience, and may not be complete or accurate.

Chicago citation style:

Daily Camera Boulder, Colo. -1928. (Boulder, CO), Jan. 1 1891. https://www.loc.gov/item/sn84002889/.

APA citation style:

(1891, January 1) Daily Camera Boulder, Colo. -1928. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/sn84002889/.

MLA citation style:

Daily Camera Boulder, Colo. -1928. (Boulder, CO) 1 Jan. 1891. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/item/sn84002889/.