The San Juan Prospector began publication in a log cabin in Del Norte in 1874. The population of Del Norte in the 1880s was only about 700 people but there was plenty of news: Six shooters, old bachelors and deadly original poetry are among San Juans leading evils. Baths have been reduced to twenty-five cents each at Montrose and no takers. The Durango cemetery is out of repair, the headboards [gravestones] down, and no corpse knows who his neighbor may be. There will be a surprise party on Judgement Day. An Aspen man fishing with dynamite the other day blew his arm off. The joy with which the news will be received will in some quarters be tempered by regrets that he did not blow his head off. Thirteen snowshoers "hooked up" to a sleigh, pulled Mrs. Ed Brown from Mineral Point over the mountains to Ouray recently. The lady was ill with rheumatism. Her child was strapped upon the fathers back during the same journey. At last the costly and time-consuming Mason murder trial is ended. Frank Mason, the accused murderer of Cal Irwin, stands acquitted of the crime and once more walks the streets a free man. Some of the jurors are credited with saying that the reason that they were in favor of finding a verdict of acquittal was because Cal Irwin called Frank Mason a s-- of a b----, and Frank had a right to shoot him. If this is a fact, it is a sad comment on Gunnison County for if this idea was carried out, the county would be depopulated in about three days.,-- author