Colorado’s Governors: Walter W. Johnson

Our series on Colorado’s governors continues with Walter W. Johnson, Colorado’s 32nd governor. Governor Johnson served for nine months in 1950. As part of the State Publications Library’s effort to digitize governors’ addresses, Governor Johnson’s 1951 address to the Colorado legislature is available in our digital collection.

Early life

Walter Johnson was born in Pueblo in 1904. His father worked as a boilermaker in the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company plant, one of the largest employers in Colorado at the time. Walter Johnson also worked for the company as a salesman after he graduated from Pueblo Central High School.

Johnson and his wife, Neva Morrow, settled in Pueblo and started a poultry farm, which supported them until the Depression in the 1930s. Still entrepreneurial, Johnson created an agency that developed property in Pueblo. He eventually designed and built many homes on the south side of the city. Around the same time, he began his insurance career working for the Penn Mutual Life Insurance Company.

Political career

Johnson’s political career began when he was elected to the Pueblo School Board in 1937. He was chairman of the Board from 1939-1943. He maintained his interest in education when he was elected to the Colorado state senate in 1940. After an unsuccessful run for the United States Congress, he was elected Lieutenant Governor in 1948 with W. Lee Knous. When Governor Knous resigned in 1950 to serve as a federal district judge, Johnson finished out the remainder of his term.

Although his tenure as governor was short, Johnson used it to save money for Colorado’s taxpayers. He called a special session of the legislature to reduce state income tax by 20% and redistributed unexpended appropriations to state agencies to save $743,000. In his address to the General Assembly, Johnson praised the healthy financial status of the state government and encouraged legislators to establish measures that would save the government money in the long run; for example, creating a state employee motor pool, purchasing office space rather than renting it, and forming an interagency mail system.

After serving as governor, Johnson returned to the state senate, where he was reelected in 1954.

Life after politics

After his final term in the state senate, Johnson moved back to Pueblo. He served on both the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education and the State Industrial Commission. He retired to Tempe, Arizona in 1970. Governor Johnson died in 1987 at age 82 and is buried in Pueblo.