Daily Tribune and Matagorda County Tribune

The paper's ancestor was the Colorado Herald, founded at Matagorda in the early 1840s by James W. Dallam, who died of yellow fever in 1845. Edward F. Gilbert renamed it the Matagorda County Tribune that August. Over the next fifty years it ran under other mastheads, among them Reporter, Gazette, Record and Democrat, and hurricanes and wartime paper shortages interrupted it. Editor J. L. Ladd brought it to Bay City in 1898 and restored the Tribune name. A daily followed in 1903, and the Smith family published it until 1958.

What the plaque says

Daily Tribune and Matagorda County Tribune Publication of this newspaper, one of the oldest in the state still in operation, began about 1845 in the nearby town of Matagorda (22 miles south). The business was moved to Bay City in the 1890's, soon after the town was named the new county seat of Matagorda county. Major events covered by the paper include several hurricanes and a yellow fever epidemic of the 1870's. A list of the publishers is inscribed on the reverse of this marker. The present owners, Bay City Newspapers, Inc., assumed ownership in 1958. (1981)

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Levi Jordan Plantation State Historic Site — 19 mi
  A sugar and cotton plantation on the San Bernard River whose enslaved builders and their descendants left one of the best-preserved African American archeological sites in Texas.
• Varner-Hogg Plantation State Historic Site — 22 mi
  A Brazos sugar plantation built by enslaved people for the Patton family, later leased convict labor and Hogg family oil, now told through Rachel Patton and Sarah Ford.

More markers nearby

• Holy Cross Catholic Church — 0.6 mi
• Site of Early Bay City School — 0.6 mi
• Eastview Cemetery — 0.6 mi
• Cedarvale Cemetery — 0.7 mi