The name ‘Filter Press’
People often want to know why the publishing house is named ‘Filter Press.’
Filter press technology was (and still is) used in the mining industry to remove water from mining concentrates. Typical filter press applications include copper, zinc, lead, nickel and other metallurgical processes.
Because the first book published back in 1957 was entitled Thirty Pound Rails and told of the Denver & Rio Grande Narrow Guage railroad, the publisher felt ’The Filter Press’ would be a clever name for his new business. Gilbert L. Campbell, who started the business, was also in fact the author, writing Thirty Pound Rails and other titles under the pseudonym ‘Kelly Choda.’ The first rails made in Colorado weighed 30 pounds to the yard, and in 1882 the Durango-Silverton route was laid with rails rolled at Pueblo, Colorado.
Although we no longer carry any of the old railroading titles, we keep the name and are proud to see the business now into the fifty-first year of continuous operation.
(Actually there are a few copies of a 1965 title Transcontinental Rails still around, and you can order one at www.filterpressbooks.com.)
April 20, 2007 at 3:41 pm
Does Filter Press have copies of THIRTY POUND RAILS available?
April 20, 2007 at 8:50 pm
Good question. Thirty Pound Rails is one of my favorite FP titles and I could use a new copy!
May 9, 2007 at 3:43 pm
Yours for a mere $48. or try AbeBooks or Alibiris
June 4, 2007 at 9:42 pm
Hi, I grew up in Palmer Lake (1977 LPHS graduate) and I never heard of Filter Press. There since 1957? Other than the RR titles mentioned above, what else did it publish in the years before you took it over? Where were the offices? Who ran the press after Gilbert Campbell? Just curious about the history.
Sherry now living in Saint Paul, Minnesota
June 4, 2007 at 11:11 pm
Hi Sherry. Gil ran the business from his home on Hwy 105 between PL and Monument until we bought the business in October, 1995. He had a complete printing operation in his basement: camera & dark room, equipment to make metal plates, a printing press, collating and stapling equipment. Quite an operation. He could run off 100 copies - or just two (’print on demand’ before the term existed!). We’ve kept in print several of the old titles because they are historically significant (Frank Cushing, Ruth Underhill, John Wesley Powell) and a few because they are fun (Blonde Chicana Bride’s Mexican Cookbook - written by Gil’s daughter Helen.)
August 29, 2007 at 10:08 am
Hi DeeBee, thanks for the reply. I lived on 3R (Red Rock Ranch) in the late 60s/early 70s until my parents divorced and then we lived with my mother in shame at the trailer park on Hwy 105. I think it is still there. It smelled of sewer as apparently the sewers ran out into the wetlands area that drained into Monument Lake (where we went swimming!). Anyway, in summers I rode my 5-speed into Palmer Lake every few days to stock up on books, piling them into the basket on front. As a child I was only allowed to check out 5 books at a time and I could plow through them in 2 days and then be back for more. Once they called my mother to get permission for me to read some adult book. I loved that library, loved the women who worked there–saved me through some bad years with my family.
Anyway, you don’t need to know all this, but surely I passed the Campbell’s every few days. The house I remember we called “Pickwick” or something. Campbell sounds so familiar, but I may be confusing with my high school math teacher “Mr. Campbell” who retired from the AFA and taught us for a few years.
How amazing never to know we had a local publisher. I did a local history project in high school, but missed that one.
Take care, Sherry Gray in Saint Paul, Minnesota, a homesick Coloradoan.