Last spring a Denver bartender named Lloyd ("Red") Barker was shot and killed by his wife. Local newspapers first carried it as a routine homicide, then speculated that the victim might be the last of the four notorious Barker brothers who, with their gangster mother, terrorized the Midwest in the '30s. Barren Beshoar, chief of our Denver news bureau, set out to find out.

From barroom characters who had known Red Barker, Beshoar learned that there might be some trunks in storage. He got hold of the lawyer who was handling the estate. They picked up a locksmith and went to the warehouse. There, among a litter of old shoes, shirts, letters and miscellaneous personal belongings, they found a handwritten manuscript which turned out to be Red's version of the story of the Barker brothers' life. That made the death of the local bartender national news, and the story appeared in the April 4

Beshoar's business, of course, is to cover the news of national interest that originates in the Rocky Mountain states.* During and since the war an increasing volume of news has come from there. Denver itself, the focus of transcontinental railroads, highways and airlines, is the largest, fastest-growing business center between Chicago and the Pacific Northwest. As such, it is the natural center of TIME Inc.'s news gathering forces in the area.

Beshoar covers his mountainous territory via automobile, halftrack, airplane, jeep, saddle horse, and on foot. There is also the telephone and Beshoar's wide acquaintance with the people, the background history, and the current facts of the Rocky Mountain area. Now 42, Beshoar is a native of Trinidad, Colo. His father was a physician and surgeon there -- as was his grandfather, who established the first drugstore between Denver and Santa Fe -- in Pueblo, Colo, in 1866. Grandfather also founded four newspapers, of which only the Pueblo Chieftain survives (another, the defunct Trinidad Advertiser, provided the late Damon Runyon with his first newspaper job).

When Beshoar became chief of our Denver bureau four years ago, he was a highly competent newspaper reporter, who had learned his trade on Denver's Rocky Mountain News, the Des Moines Register and Tribune, and various Colorado dailies and weeklies. During the war he was regional chief of information for the War Manpower Commission. His present job of keeping TIME'S editors up-to-date on Denver and the Rocky Mountain area is as varied as Beshoar's extensive (859,009 sq. mi.) territory. It requires a regional expert's knowledge of many fields : mining, livestock and oil, for instance, as well as local state politics. The Denver bureau's growing news file includes such stories as the Goethe Festival at Aspen, Colo. (TIME, July 11), the cow that Sot stuck in the silo (TIME, March 7),

starvation among the Navajo Indians (TIME, Nov. 3, 1947) and, of course, last winter's disastrous blizzards.

TIME'S Denver bureau is now six years old. In keeping with Denver's increased postwar activity and tempo and with its strategic location on the transcontinental transportation and communications lanes, TIME Inc. has also transferred some of its publishing functions there. At present 133 TIME Inc. employees are working at the job of fulfilling and servicing subscriptions for FORTUNE magazine (U.S. and foreign) and for the International editions of TIME and LIFE -- a job that, in effect, links Denver with 180 countries and possessions around the world to which our magazines go.

Cordially yours,

* Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Utah, Wyoming.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.