Estes Park Trail-Gazette
The Trail-Gazette is a weekly newspaper in Estes Park, Colorado. It is published by Prairie Mountain Publishing, a unit of MediaNews Group.
History
The Estes Park Trail began as a seasonal weekly magazine catering to the tourists who flocked to the Rockies from June through September. John Y. Munson, a retired farmer who lived in Berthoud, Colorado, was the first publisher. In 1912, he made suggestions for improvements such as village beautification, waste cans on Elkhorn Avenue and daily street cleaning. Those suggestions branded the publication as a community newspaper from its inception.By 1914, the Estes Park Trail had grown to 42 illustrated pages of travel articles, poetry, area news, columns about visitors, the occasional pithy editorial, and advertisements. The Trail chronicled the early twentieth-century development of Estes Park, providing insights into early Colorado tourism and Rocky Mountain National Park.
In 1921, with the backing of businessmen who wanted a job printer in Estes Park, Arthur B. Harris became the editor and publisher of the Estes Park Trail, which was thereafter produced locally. He published the weekly paper from April into December, and remained the editor as late as 1930.
Thus the early seasonal tourist magazine evolved into a year-round community newspaper which became today's Trail-Gazette.
Some issues of the Estes Park Trail for 1914-1924 are preserved in the digital collections of Colorado Historic Newspapers online.