Let’s say you are the publisher of a newspaper in a small mining town in Colorado and you run out of the regular paper you use to print your publication. What do you do? In the case of The Silver World published in Lake City, Colorado, you find an alternative source of paper.
Recently AAS acquired a copy of this paper dated May 4, 1886. What immediately catches the eye is the yellow paper. Due to a shortage of regular paper, this issue was printed on yellow wrapping paper. As you can see, it served its purpose well. The paper is thinner than normal, but it took ink well and produced a serviceable issue.
The Silver World began in 1875 as the first newspaper of Lake City. At first it was printed on a Washington-style hand press. In 1877 they obtained what is said to be the first power press west of the Continental Divide (it weighed 3 tons), brought in by road as no railroad had yet reached Lake City. There are conflicting stories about when the paper ended, but it ceased in either 1888 or 1889.
Lake City still exists, despite a declining population since 1900. Today 375 people live in the town, which also includes 200 historic buildings.
