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Pike’s Peak Daily News. Vol. 3, No. 168. 2nd edition.
Manitou, Colorado, 12 Aug. 1899. Folio (16.5” x 11”), illustrated self wrappers, including chromolithographic cover. [8] pp. including wrappers, b&w illus. Cover illus. and some photo-illus. signed “Reistle.” CONDITION: Good, some fading to the newspaper text, back cover rubbed. An issue of the first newspaper published on Pike’s Peak, with a vivid front wrapper, extensive text, and photographic illustrations mostly from photos. The cover features a chromolithograph of a woman dressed all in red, looking through binoculars at a sunset just beyond Pike’s Peak. The railway can be seen snaking up the mountain and a bighorn sheep in the lower right looks toward the woman. The subjects illustrated within include the office of Pike’s Peak News under construction; a young “news reporter” “on his toboggan, on the Cog Railroad, making a mile a minute”; a train “conductor” on a Toboggan “on a special mission for the Pike’s Peak News”; and the “outdoor branch printing office Pike’s Peak News. Near Timber Line, 1897,” which shows the publisher Grace T. Wilson outdoors with her daughter and husband, Thomas B. Wilson (their house features a sign reading “Pike’s Peak Daily News”). Articles include “A Grand and Historic Mountain and a Remarkable Railroad”; “Servia is a Hotbed of Wicked Plots”; “The True Reason of the Attempt to Assassinate Ex-King Milan”; and “Manitou, The Peerless Queen of All Health Resorts,” covering antelope hunting and the Arkansas Valley. Shorter pieces include “Expensive Lovemaking”; “Utah Mining Districts”; “The Ideal Female Arm”; “Opals Not Unlucky” (concerning First Lady Mrs. McKinley); verses entitled “Back in Old Ohio”; a cautionary story about a man getting lost in the Colorado woods, etc. Elevations of local lakes, mountain peaks, passes, etc. are given, as well as altitudes and populations of Colorado towns and cities, and a list of local words with pronunciations. Brief notices and news-flashes are featured throughout, as well as transit information. A photomontage of various Pike’s Peak scenes appears on the last page. Grace T. Wilson (1861–1936) and her husband Thomas published the Pike’s Peak Daily News from 1891 into the 1920s. The newspaper bills itself here as “first and only newspaper ever published on Pike’s Peak…Altitude 14,147 ft,” the official organ of the Manitou and Pike’s Peak Railroad, the principal readers being passengers of the railway. The newspaper contained daily the names of every noted arrival on the summit of Pike’s Peak; page 3 lists dozens of passengers and their hometowns. Issued daily during the summer season only, Pike’s Peak Daily News included ads for local businesses such as Low’s Book Store and for excursions via the Denver & Rio Grande R.R. The newspaper professes to reach the tourist-traveling public—people who “have the money to spend it.” Frank Reistle (1858-1911) was a photographer, photo-engraver, and an illustrator (as evidenced here) active in Steamboat Springs and Denver from the 1880s to the turn of the century.
Item #6462
Price: $275.00