| Type | Thrice-weekly newspaper |
|---|---|
| Format | Broadsheet |
| Owner | Casa Grande Valley Newspapers Inc. |
| Founded | January 1912 (1912-01), asCasa Grande Times |
| Headquarters | 200 West Second Street Casa Grande,Arizona 85122,United States |
| Circulation | 5,606 (as of 2022)[1] |
| OCLC number | 16877473 |
| Website | trivalleycentral |
TheCasa Grande Dispatch is an Americannewspaper published Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays inCasa Grande, Arizona. Circulated in Casa Grande and surrounding areas, it isPinal County's largest paid circulation newspaper.[2] It has been published under the current ownership,Casa Grande Valley Newspapers Inc. since 1963, and in January 2012 it began its 100th consecutive year of publication.
Casa Grande was without a newspaper for most of its 33 years before theCasa Grande Times appeared in January 1912, founded byJ. F. Brown, who was also its first editor. It was not the earliest paper, but it was the first to endure.[3]
Showing an interest in an issue still important in the desert, theTimes supported formation of an irrigation district. The paper was printed inTucson. It was not until July 1913 that an editor's name appeared on the masthead, Bunny Randall. The next month it changed, apparently becoming more formal: Wainwright Randall.
The next year, a joint venture founded theCasa Grande Bulletin. The first issue was printed on a Washington hand press in Casa Grande in September 1913.
Angela Hutchinson Hammer was a divorced mother of three who had supported her family printing and publishing. She had a successful paper, theMiner, inWickenburg, before deciding to take a break from the heated political climate there. She opened a print shop inPhoenix with the help of her teenage sons, Louis and Billy.
She was approached there by Ted Healey, aCochise County newspaperman who had the idea of a paper for Casa Grande but needed a printer. An agreement was made, but problems occurred from the start: She had to pay the freight charges for shipping her equipment because Healey could not, even though he had agreed to do so. Nevertheless, theBulletin, named after a paper Healey had in Cochise County, went into publication.
The partners quarreled frequently. Hammer was a Democrat and Healey a Republican. A bigger division was that he favored pumping of groundwater while she supported a water users group that wanted to useGila River water for farming. An editorial she wrote about the water issue was hidden by Healey, but recovered and printed.
After further problems, Hammer split up the partnership, moved her printing equipment and began publishing theCasa Grande Valley Dispatch in January 1914. Her equipment first was set up on an open lot, then moved inside a warehouse with no front. TheTimes merged with theDispatch soon after the latter's founding.
A battle between theDispatch and theBulletin ensued. Hammer later bought theBulletin, but a lender foreclosed on her equipment, an event that may have been hoped for by her opponents. She persevered, having her paper printed in Phoenix for a while.
Hammer leased the paper out for a short while duringWorld War I. She took it back and kept it going despite difficult times economically. The paper became more prosperous in the early 1920s. In 1924 she sold it toFlorence publisher A.C. Wrenn, whose son Harold took over theDispatch.
In 1928 Healey sold theBulletin to his former competitor, and in 1929 the combined paper's name was changed to its present one,Casa Grande Dispatch. Ownership, however, changed several times through the early 1960s. Donovan M. Kramer Sr. and his wife, Ruth, bought the paper in late 1962 from Western Newspapers Inc. ofYuma.
TheDispatch then was a smallweekly newspaper and was published in the building that now houses the Casa Grande Steakhouse, on Second Street near Florence Street. The Kramers soon converted to the offset printing process with cold type and moved the office up the street to 200 West Second Street, formerly the home of the post office, and to another building immediately to the west. Other buildings were purchased over the years in that block.
TheDispatch in 1963 began publishing twice a week, and it became a member of theAssociated Press in 1967. A third edition was added on Fridays in 1971. Five-day-a-week publication began in 1974, and a Saturday morning edition started in 1976. Later theDispatch ended its Monday edition in favor of a Sunday edition and at that time the paper was changed from afternoon to morning delivery. In June 2019 theDispatch began publishing three days per week — Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays — with news and content published daily on its website,PinalCentral.com
The Kramers bought the weeklyEloy Enterprise in 1967 and theFlorence Reminder in 1970. They merged theReminder with theFlorence Blade-Tribune when it was bought the next year along with theCoolidge Examiner.
Casa Grande Valley Newspapers Inc. now also publishes the weeklyArizona City Independent (in consolidation with theArizona City Edition) andMaricopa Monitor. The company also publishes ashopper,Central Saver, andPinal Ways magazine,Pinal Real Estate Buyers' Guide,Arizona Autos. The Kramer family also owns theWhite Mountain Independent, covering Show Low, Pinetop-Lakeside, Springerville, St. Johns and Snowflake. and the Payson Roundup covering Payson, Pine, Strawberry, Rye and Tonto Basin.[4]
