Page:History of American Journalism.djvu/286

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HISTORY OF AMERICAN JOURNALISM

Moury. Out of this paper grew the present Citizen of Tucson. Incidentally, it may be remarked that in the fall of 1879 the old press was taken to Tombstone, where it was used to print The Nugget, the first paper in that camp.

The second paper in Arizona was called The Miner and was started in Prescott on March 9, 1864, by John H. Marion. Interested in the enterprise was R. C. McCormick, the secretary of the Territory for that year. Beginning in 1866, Marion published The Daily Arizona Miner during the session of the Legislature.

The third paper was The Sentinel, started in Yuma in 1870. Among the most interesting of the early Arizona papers was The Epitaph, started on May 1, 1880, at Tombstone. Its founders were John P. Chun, the mayor and also the postmaster at Tucson, Charles D. Reppy, and Thomas Sorin. The name of the paper was suggested by John Hayes Hammond, who later became distinguished as one of the foremost mining engineers. He was dining, with the gentlemen who were about to start the paper, at the Can Can Restaurant. When he asked what the name was to be he was informed that no title had as yet been selected. Hammond, recalling a rather exciting adventure which had recently happened, suggested that in view of the character of the news the paper would probably print, there could be no more fitting title than The Epitaph. The title was thought very appropriate and was promptly adopted.

When The Epitaph was founded there were but six counties in the Territory of Arizona and but ten newspapers printed in the English language. These included The Nugget at Tombstone, The Record, The Citizen, and The Star at Tucson, The Silver Belt at Globe, The Salt River Herald and Territorial Expositor at Phœnix, The Enterprise and The Miner at Prescott, and The Sentinel at Yuma.


ROCKY MOUNTAIN PAPERS OF COLORADO

In Denver The Rocky Mountain News has the distinction of being the oldest paper in Colorado. Its first issue was April 23, 1859, in a struggling, home-seekers' settlement which had not yet a definite name. The discovery of placer gold some months