The Town Crier serves the area of the San Jacinto Mountains in Riverside County, California.

[3] The paper was founded by married couple Ernie and Betty Maxwell, a visual artist and a former Broadway dancer, who moved to the town in 1944 during a post-war boom in logging and tourism.

[4][5] Ernie Maxwell continued as editor/publisher until 1957, when he hired an editor and renamed it to the Idyllwild Town Crier,[6] though from 1969 to 1971 the paper used its original name.

[5] The Idyllwild Town Crier changed corporate hands in 1994 when it sold to England-based Tindle Newspaper Group.

[5][10] The paper returned to private ownership in June 2013, when Becky & Jack Clark bought the paper through their newly formed Idyllwild House Publishing Co. Ltd. Becky is the longest ever employee of the Idyllwild Town Crier, including serving as editor/publisher during some of the Tindle years.