craigdailypress.com

Craig — Well, by golly, it is fair time in Northwest Colorado. I just happened to run across this article, which appeared in the August 8, 1919, edition of the Routt County Republican published in Hayden. Since the article does a good job of bragging about Craig, I thought it was worth putting in the paper during Craig's 100th anniversary. The article follows.

We had the pleasure of spending several hours in the county seat of Moffat County on Wednesday of this past week. Craig is a busy town and it is surprising how many autos, teams and trucks are on the street. The Craig people are a friendly lot and make you feel at home while there. They are a lively bunch, too, as the many accomplishments of the town show. Craig is pretty well up-to-date except the lack of an electric light plant, and the light is coming soon. They are not afraid of high taxes down there presumably as a new courthouse, a water system, a new school house and other improvements were put up within two years, and now they are talking about a new high school building.

Moffat County has short crops, but the Craig people are not discouraged. The bank deposits are right now about $500,000 in the two banks and the income from the fall stock shipments is to come in yet. Although the crop is short, the wheat is running as high as 22 bushels per acre. The acreage is quite large this year, and this means a lot of grain will be shipped. The grain already is being hauled to town, and we saw several loads of grain and some big loads of lumber coming into town from the north. There is such a big tract of territory tributary to the town that teams and autos are coming in all the time and two or three dozen vehicles are seen on the street even in the middle of the week. The businessmen say business is good.

Craig can keep three garages going and then a night force is on at least part of the time. The French Plow Company has worked up quite a reputation for welding, and castings are sent to them to be welded from many miles around. John Lindstrom started out with a small blacksmith shop in Craig a few years ago and now is doing a big implement and smith business; Ben Wright is another fellow at Craig who has flourished like a green bay tree. He started out a few years ago with three suspender buttons and lots of nerve and now has a fine business block and does a rattling good business.

Hadsell and Pownall of the Good Eats Cafe are two other fellows who have more than made good. Hadsell hails from Kansas, and it is hard to keep a Kansas man in the backseat. We speak of these men as samples, not pretending to give the list of successful men in the town. George Norvell with his many acres of land and Lee Jones in the lumber yard threaten to become bloated bondholders in the near future.

The Craig bunch is alive and are great fellows to toot their own horn, it is for this reason they are the best advertisers you can find, and the newspaper offices are both kept busy and prosperous.

We went down to Craig primarily in the interest of the fair, and while in, we heard of some fine blooded stock. Of course we wished the owners to bring them to the fair to be held in Hayden on Sept. 3, 4 and 5. The Gossard ranch west of Craig has one of the finest bunches of stock cattle, horses and hogs of any ranch in the state. We heard of some good bunches of hogs and hope Riley Hamilton and a few others bring some of their fine stock to the fair. Eben Hamilton and Don Sterling and Tom Forkner have some fine Holstein cattle that should be at the fair. We have had something to do with the Holstein cattle in years past and like that breed of dairy stock. All the people in Craig expect to come to the county fair and we hope they do for two reasons: We will show them a good time and we need the crowd.