Page:History of American Journalism.djvu/291

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BEGINNINGS IN STATES AND TERRITORIES
255

truly primitive style Baker thus reported a wedding in the winter of 1867-68. "On the east half of the northwest quarter of section twenty-two (22), township twenty-one (21), north of range eleven (11), in an open sleigh, and under an open and unclouded canopy, by the Rev. J. F. Mason, James B., only son of John Cox of Colorado, and Ellen C., eldest daughter of Major O. Harrington of Nebraska." Published tri-weekly, The Leader sold for twelve dollars a year, or fifteen cents a copy. Before coming to Cheyenne, Mr. Baker had made an unsuccessful attempt to establish The Colorado Leader at Denver in July, 1867.

In the spring of 1868 A. E. Slack started another Wyoming paper at South Pass under the name of The South Pass News, and in the fall of 1869 S. A. Bristol started The Wyoming Weekly Tribune at Cheyenne. The latter had a precarious life and only survived about five years.

In Laramie A. E. Slack brought out Volume I, Number 1, of The Independent on December 26, 1871. It continued publication in that city until March, 1876, when Mr. Slack moved his plant to Cheyenne and consolidated with The Daily News of that city under the name of The Cheyenne Sun. (The Cheyenne News had been started in 1874.) Later, The Sun united with The Leader and the union was known as The Sun-Leader. As time went on, The Sun set and left only The Leader. The paper is still published as The Leader at Cheyenne.

Two Wyoming papers of unusual importance must be noticed. The first was The Boomerang at Laramie, started on March 17, 1880, by Edgar Wilson Nye, and Bill Barrow's Budget at Douglas in 1886, by W. C. Barrow.


END OF BEGINNINGS

Colonel Clement A. Lounsberry was the founder of journalism in North Dakota, the last of the States and Territories to have a newspaper. On July 6, 1873, he established The Bismarck Tribune. His first issue was remarkable in that it contained an advertisement of every business establishment in Bismarck. In the fall of that year it was forced for a short time to print on wall-paper on account of a snow blockade. For the same