Celebrating 50 years of community journalism in Wimberley
The idea for The Wimberley View didn’t begin in a newsroom.
It began at a dining room table, with a nurse, a technical writer and a young journalist who had no real plan for what came next.
“It started really as a dream, as an idea,” Patrick Cox, who co-founded the paper alongside his parents Doris and Beven Varnon, said. “It was nothing, literally, that any of us … were prepared to do.”
The conversation that followed was simple, if not a bit naive.
“We’re thinking that it’s a good idea that we should start a newspaper in Wimberley,” Cox recounted Beven saying. “… He said, ‘Yeah, I think it’s going to be fun to run a newspaper.”
Cox said those words while rolling his eyes knowing now, in hindsight, how difficult the reality of running a newspaper would really be.
That conversation in 1975 would lead to the founding of The Wimberley View in March 1976, timed to coincide with the opening of Wimberley Bank, where Ozona Bank is now located.
Cox was speaking at the 50-year anniversary of the newspaper held at the Wimberley Village Library in March. The dozens of readers, contributors and former employees in attendance heard the story of how the Wimberley newspaper became the View.
Before the paper had a name, before its first issue rolled off a press in Fredericksburg, there was a drive up Ranch Road 12, and a moment that would define everything that followed.
Cox told a story about riding with his stepfather Beven as they were formulating the idea of what a small town newspaper should be. He estimated that Wimberley had around 1,000 residents at the time.
They pulled over at a roadside park on Ranch Road 12, perched at the edge of the Wimberley Valley. Beven said it would be a great place to contemplate what they were preparing to do.
“As soon as he said, ‘This is a great place to see Wimberley,’” Cox said. “I said, ‘That’s it, Beven. That’s our name: The Wimberley View.’” As they say, the rest is history.
In the first issue of the paper, the founding crew tried to capture exactly what they felt when they were sitting in that park overlooking the valley.
“The road begins to wind, and you are aware of a gradual ascent… Slow down now. For something is about to happen which will never happen again in exactly the same way,” the front page of the first edition read. “Your heart is about to race, your breath is about to come in gasps, and your eyes are about to be branded forever. This is the Wimberley View.”
They weren’t alone for long. Among the first to join them was Dale Robertson, who was in the crowd during the anniversary celebration and, like many who have worked at The View over the years, is still part of the Wimberley community today.
They began putting together the first issue of the paper. It was a process that was more difficult than expected, in part because of the overwhelming support from the community. It is a trend that would continue for decades to come.
“It took a little longer than we anticipated,” Cox said. “Because the good thing is we had more pages and more news and more advertisers than we expected.”
The paper was printed in Fredericksburg, where Cox said he remembers watching copies come off the press. He held up a messy, ink-heavy copy of the first edition.
“It’s literally the very first legible edition of the newspaper,” he said.
From there, the papers were loaded up and driven back to Wimberley. The staff gathered at the original office, at that time located in the shopping center across from what is now Brookshire Brothers.
The newspaper grew quickly. Though Wimberley was small, interest in the paper was not. Within a few years, the View had built a subscription base approaching 3,000. That was well more than the estimated population, fueled in part by out-oftown readers drawn to the “lure of the hills” that continues to bring so many people to Wimberley today.
“People love Wimberley,” Cox said. “And so we had a lot of out-of-town subscribers … and that really helped us expand.”
By 1979, just a few years after launching, the paper had earned statewide recognition. It won the “General Excellence” award, which was top honors from the Texas Press Association recognizing the best weekly newspaper in Texas.
Ownership of the paper would eventually change hands, but the foundation built in those early years endured.
Cox’s family sold The Wimberley View to Jack Mynier in the 1980s. In 1988, the office moved to Cornerstone Business Park at the corner of Ranch Road 12 and FM 3237, where it remained until the office closed in March of this year.
Mynier later sold the paper to Moser Community Newspapers in 2014, continuing its run as a locally focused publication as the newspaper industry shifted.
For Dalton Sweat, who served as editor of the View for nearly a decade, the paper’s purpose became clear the moment he walked in through the door and read the words on the front page of the inaugural copy of the newspaper that was hanging on the wall.
“Our job is to reflect back the community,” Sweat said. “To show what they are.”
That reflection, he said, includes both the idyllic and the difficult. It shows the charm of a Hill Country town as well as the debates, disasters and divisions that shape it.
“What I really determined eventually was that the View is you,” Sweat said, talking about the community.
He pointed to major moments covered by the paper during his tenure. From floods to water wars to telling the story of the people and personalities that built the town into what it is today. Sweat said those articles stood out as examples of the impact community journalism can have, but also that journalism in this community would not exist without the community itself.
“Without the community’s commitment to this paper, we never would have been anything,” he said. “We wouldn’t be here today.”
That connection is something current editor Teresa Kendrick said she feels every day in her work.
“Writing for the Wimberley View is more than just a job. It’s a labor of love,” Kendrick said. “It’s impossible to do this work without forming tremendously rewarding relationships with the people who make up this incredible town.”
She said that those relationships are what sustain the paper, even as both the ownership and industry changes.
Kendrick told listeners The Wimberley View became part of Texas Local Media in March 2026.
From the beginning the goal was simple: to create something that would last.
“We wanted to leave a legacy for this paper,” Cox said, “and have it be an institution that would be here… to help preserve, protect and tell this story of people and events and life.”
Fifty years later, that story is still being written — one View at a time.
Patrick Cox, who founded the Wimberley View with his parents Beven and Doris Varen, holds up the first legible issue of the inaugural edition of The Wimberley View that he pulled hot off the press in March of 1976. Daily Record photos by Dalton Sweat
