The Bland Herald Newspaper - Bland, New Mexico. June 2, 1899

THE BLAND HERALD. BLAND, NEW MEXICO. JUNE 2, 1899.

A very rare 19th century New Mexico newspaper issued 13 years before New Mexico became a state. 4 pages, four columns per page, advertisements, personal mentions, forfeiture notice, etc. Front page news titled Act In Relation To Brands and Railway To Bland – Chances for the People of the Cochiti to Get a Road. Time table for the Athison, Topeka and Santa Fe Ry., Mineral Applications, plus other news of the day. The Bland Herald was published every Friday at Bland, Bernalillo County, N.M. in the Heart of the Cochiti Mining District by Will Ments, Editor. Vg cond.

Once a booming gold and silver mining town, Bland mining days were proud and generous beginning in the 1890’s. The Denver Rocky Mountain News proclaimed the region as a “New Cripple Creek” and this sparked a rush of miners to created a town of clapboard buildings as they took out the wealth from the mines. By the turn of the century Bland was a booming, hard-working metropolis with a full 3,000 people inhabiting the area including the town of Albemarle which was 3 ½ miles from Bland. In March of 1900, 1500 men were reported at work in the mines, mills and sawmills. Within four months Bland claimed two banks, the Bland Herald newspaper, a hotel, stock exchange, opera house, over a dozen saloons, a school, a church and various stores. “Diamond Queen,” the well known courtesan of Bland’s red light district, contributed the altar and a Bible to the new Methodist Episcopal Church. Mining production in the Cochiti district had started in 1894 and by the end of 1904 amounted to a little more than a million dollars and within a very short time Bland’s boom had passed. (Ghost Towns and mining Camps of New Mexico)