{"id":88803,"date":"2020-05-02T18:35:59","date_gmt":"2020-05-03T00:35:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/mancos-common-press-featured-in-pbs-documentary\/"},"modified":"2020-05-02T18:35:59","modified_gmt":"2020-05-03T00:35:59","slug":"mancos-common-press-featured-in-pbs-documentary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/mancos-common-press-featured-in-pbs-documentary\/","title":{"rendered":"Mancos Common Press featured in PBS documentary"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Rocky
Rocky Mountain PBS recently aired a documentary featuring the Mancos Common Press and its role in the town\u2019s history. The Cranston Press is a rare artifact nationally, and was recently restored in the old Mancos Times-Tribune building.<\/span>The Journal file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Mancos made mainstream television recently with the release of a PBS documentary featuring the Mancos Common Press and its role in shaping the town.<\/p>\n

\u201cPress of the West\u201d aired April 16 as part of the Rocky Mountain PBS Colorado Experience series. The 26-minute documentary tells the story of the press and its restoration, weaving together a host of local voices who reflect on the historical value of newspapers in the West and why the restoration means so much to Mancos.<\/p>\n

\u201cI just thought it was an interesting story of unexpected discovery and also a way of talking about the importance of small-town papers in settling the old West,\u201d Carol Fleisher, Rocky Mountain PBS producer-in-residence at Fort Lewis College, told The Journal<\/em>. \u201cWe could do that through the lens of the Mancos Times<\/em>, and the underpinning of the story being this discovery of the Cranston Press.\u201d<\/p>\n

The film traces the history of the 100-year-old press over the past century, and its recent rediscovery by a crew of preservationists from University of Pennsylvania. The idea to focus on the Mancos press had been percolating for a few years, Fleisher said, but really came to fruition last year.<\/p>\n

Under Fleisher\u2019s guidance, a crew of FLC students planned, filmed, produced and edited the documentary.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that they really got the sense of community out of Mancos,\u201d Fleisher said. \u201cAnd I also think that they learned a lot about teamwork and collaborating, which is really one of the best things I can teach.\u201d<\/p>\n

The press\u2019 story is tied to that of the Mancos newspaper scene. The Mancos Times<\/em> was founded in 1893 as the town\u2019s first newspaper, and the Mancos Tribune<\/em> was founded in 1902. A few years later, the Freeman brothers purchased and merged the papers to create the Mancos Times-Tribune<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was definitely the local, family newspaper,\u201d Mancos Mayor Queenie Barz, niece of longtime editor Ira Freeman, said in the film. \u201cEverybody had their own little headline.<\/p>\n

\"Mancos
Mancos artist Brad Goodell painted a mural on the side of the old Mancos Times-Tribune building reflecting the history of the Common Press.<\/span>The Journal file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The Cranston Press was purchased in 1910, according to the Mancos Common Press website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The last publisher of the Mancos Times-Tribune<\/em> was the late Richard (Dick) Patrick, who purchased the newspaper in 1963. His daughter, retired teacher Pam Coppinger, said Patrick always wanted to be a publisher and had to learn the reporting part while on the job \u2013 which for a local small-town newspaper in the 1960s, meant that he was \u201cinvolved in everything.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThere were no computers at that point, not even cellphones,\u201d she told The Journal<\/em>. \u201cSo you had to be at the events. You couldn\u2019t rely on other people, so you were at every game, every funeral, every wedding.\u201d<\/p>\n

She recalls rising early on Friday mornings and printing addresses for the papers to be delivered, manually using a smaller press.<\/p>\n

Patrick sold the paper to the Brown family in the late 1960s, Coppinger said. The Browns later sell the paper to the Ballantine family of Durango.<\/p>\n

In 2013, a part-time Mancos resident and University of Pennsylvania preservationist named Frank Matero stumbled across the press and was amazed at the find.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe gilding on the great wheel caught my eye, and I realized it was an entirely intact print shop,\u201d Matero said in the documentary. He likened the discovery to archaeologist Howard Carter coming across King Tut\u2019s tomb in the 1920s.<\/p>\n

Further digging showed that there were only three known Cranston Presses in the nation at the time, Matero said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was obvious to me at least that if we could get this building back and make it alive again, get it back into the mainstream of the Mancos citizenry, we could really do some amazing things for the town as well as for the press,\u201d Matero said.<\/p>\n

A group of locals banded together, formed a steering committee, and in 2014, secured 501(c)(3) status. The Ballantine family donated the building and its contents to the organization, and in 2016, the group received a grant from the Colorado State Historical Fund to restore the property.<\/p>\n

The nonprofit called the press and their group the \u201cMancos Common Press,\u201d after an invention of Benjamin Franklin\u2019s, and a press shop standing at the University of Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe decided to call it the Mancos Common Press, almost like it was the Common Press of the West,\u201d said Tami Graham, board president of the organization, in the film.<\/p>\n

According to the Mancos Common Press website, the Cranston Press is an 8-foot-tall, single-revolution, big-cylinder \u201cdrum\u201d design, with \u201cwooden delivery fingers,\u201d flipping out paper one at a time.<\/p>\n

Although the press wasn\u2019t running at first, it luckily had been fairly well-preserved.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was pretty much hermetically sealed,\u201d said Matt Neff, an expert on archaic printing presses from the University of Pennsylvania, in the film.<\/p>\n

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