07/31/2026
UPDATE: Posting the historical photo of the Times-Tribune led to some interesting questions and conversation. Therefore, we decided to update our original post with the following information from our museum files.
THE BUILDING: Located at 215 N Dean Street, this building is recognizable today as the Masonic Lodge No 852. “The Lodge held its meetings in several locations before building its own hall at this site. It first met here on July 1, 1940 and held meetings upstairs and leased the first floor space to a number of enterprises, including the Gladewater Daily Times-Tribune.” (From the Texas Historical Marker database). Soon after its consolidation with the Gladewater Daily Mirror in 1949, the newspaper offices were moved into a new building on S. Dean Street and remained there until recent years.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF GLADEWATER NEWSPAPERS: “Gladewater’s first newspaper, The Gladewater Gazette, edited and published by Walter C Holloway, was established in 1909 and lasted until 1914. Several other weekly newspaper attempts, mostly sporadic, followed. The pace of journalism and its impact on the community were to undergo radical changes, just as the town itself did, beginning with the East Texas oil boom in 1931. The quiet town of approximately 500 almost overnight turned into a bustling town of 10,000, mostly a floating population of oilfield workers and ‘get-rich schemers’ preying on the boomers. It was also an opportune time for newspaper ventures. In August, 1931, the tabloid Gladewater Gusher, the city’s first daily, was launched. But within a month’s time, the paper had turned to weekly publication and changed its nameplate to The Gladewater Journal; despite promises from Gladewater merchants to the contrary, the paper could not elicit adequate advertising to sustain its daily operation. Later that year, however, two additional papers—the semi-weekly Gladewater News and the weekly Gladewater Times—entered the Gladewater market to reap a share of the boom town’s fortune. Other papers followed, including the semi-weekly Gladewater Tribune in 1936.”
When Barnes H.Broiles, editor of a daily in Mexia, “entered the Gladewater newspaper field, he merged the semi-weekly Tribune with the then Daily Times to form the Gladewater Daily Times-Tribune. In 1949, local oilman T.W. Lee went into competition with The Times-Tribune with his Gladewater Daily Mirror and later that year, he purchased Broiles’ newspaper interest.”
After Lee’s death in 1954, the Daily Mirror was sold to Harry Kates who was from a pioneer Oklahoma newspaper family and former publisher of The Claremont (Oklahoma) Progress.
The newspaper information was taken from a bound copy of a thesis titled “An Historical Study of Gladewater Newspapers, with Emphasis on the Daily Times-Tribune, the Daily Mirror, and The Mirror” written by James Edwin Todd and submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of East Texas State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science, December, 1973. Cited as primary sources interviewed by the author of the thesis included Barnes H Broiles, former editor-publisher of the Gladewater Times-Tribune, Jerri Mauldin, manager of the T. W. Lee estate, and Mrs. Harry (Mary) Kates, publisher of the Gladewater Mirror.
The Gladewater Mirror is still in active publication as a local weekly newspaper and online news source serving the Gladewater area. Currently owned by publisher Jim Bardwell, Bardwell Inc., LLC, the offices are located at 211 N. Main, Gladewater.
