Anaconda has been home to many newspapers over the last 140 years. Most recently, the paper of record since 1970 was the Anaconda Leader, and before that the short-lived Magicland Times – and even before that, the Anaconda Standard. But before all of those, the first was our namesake, the Anaconda Weekly Review.
The Anaconda Weekly Review was founded in 1884 by Levi O. Leonard, published with the slogan, “A Paper for the People.” In later issues, it also had slogans reading: “The best local paper in the territory. Send it to your friends!”
In 1884, having resigned his position as a civil engineer with the Utah and Northern Railroad, Leonard settled in Anaconda – which had just been founded a year prior – where he bought the Anaconda Weekly Review, according to the Levi O. Leonard Railway Collection published by the University of Iowa.
Ten years later he left Anaconda for Butte, where he renamed his newspaper the Mining and Railroad Review. In the fall of 1897 he sold the Review and returned to the transportation industry as a traveling freight agent for the Missouri Pacific Railroad.
Although the paper was originally named and established by Leonard on May 10, 1884, it didn’t start producing articles until 1886 when John S. Mills took the helm as editor and publisher.
At this time the paper was a blanket sheet, eight columns, four pages, measuring 19 ½ by 24 ½ inches, according to “The History of Journalism in Montana, 1863-1890”.
By 1886 the town boasted two weekly publications: the Anaconda Weekly Review, a democratic newspaper, and another short-lived paper, the Anaconda Weekly Gazette, according to a document from the United States Department of the Interior National Park Service.
Although it’s unclear why, when the Anaconda Weekly Review started publishing again in July 1886, it began advertising a joint subscription with the Chicago Weekly News where subscribers could get both papers, first for $3.50 a year, and later $3.75 a year ($125 and $133 in today’s dollars).
The Review would play a small but important role in the development of a media empire.
When Montana achieved statehood, Anaconda founder Marcus Daly sought to have his planned city designated as the new state capital, and a key component in that campaign would be having a strong newspaper in support of it.
As the National Register of Historic Places writes:
“In his pursuit of establishing a first-rate daily newspaper, Daly was saddled with the arduous task of finding an experienced and refined publisher and newspaperman who was willing to assume the risk of producing a major metropolitan-styled publication in a rugged mountain hamlet. He found that man in Dr. John Hurst Durston, a philologist, professor, and newspaper editor from Syracuse, New York. Daly had been impressed by a political editorial written by Durston for the Anaconda Review in 1888. He thus offered Durston the job along with a blank check to soothe any of Durston’s doubts about the sincerity of the offer. The Anaconda Standard was born for a purported $5,000,000 [$175 million in 2026 dollars], publishing its first issue from an Anaconda shoe shop on September 4, 1889.”
Even though the Battle for the Capital was lost, the Anaconda Standard would dominate the news scene for decades – first from the Smelter City in its offices that are now home to the Anaconda Elks Club, and later from Butte under a new name, the Montana Standard, though the old name would persist for a time as a weekly local insert.
Still, there was room in the local news market in earlier days as the Standard set its sights on state, national and international matters, and it was a market the Review filled. In the Sept. 13, 1888 edition of the Anaconda Weekly Review, the proprietor L.O. Leonard certified the paper’s circulation was 1,300, where it stayed steady for the rest of the year.
The Review continued as a weekly until June 12, 1894, when its last issue appeared in Anaconda. Until today.
James S. Rosien contributed to the reporting of this story.
