Dan De Quille

Territorial Enterprise

The Territorial Enterprise was one of the American West's most important newspapers during the 1860s and 70s. William Jernegan and Alfred James founded the publication on December 18, 1858, in Genoa. Nine months later, the Enterprise moved to Carson City where Jonathan Williams eventually became its sole owner and editor. In October 1860, he moved his business to Virginia City, then barely a year old. Within a few months, Joseph Goodman and Denis McCarthy joined Williams as partners, with Goodman becoming editor-in-chief and eventually sole owner.

Sagebrush School

The main contribution to American literature from Nevada's mining frontier, 1859 to 1914, was the writing of the Sagebrush School. It was a major contribution, more important than other, better-known regional movements. Like New England's transcendentalism, the Sagebrush School was a loose, somewhat informal association of writers. In this case it refers to authors who either lived and worked in Nevada or spent formative years there during its mining booms.

Valley Times

In a storied journalism history that includes Mark Twain and Dan De Quille, national figures such as Hank Greenspun, and renowned newspapers like Virginia City's Territorial Enterprise, the Valley Times has a place among Nevada's most controversial and important newspapers.

History of Nevada Journalism

The first newspaper in present day Nevada was apparently the Gold-Cañon Switch of Johntown, a mining community about four miles from what became Virginia City on the Comstock. The paper, founded about 1854, was handwritten. Unfortunately, no copies exist.

Artemus Ward

Artemus Ward, often called the first standup comic, played a pivotal role in the history of American literature during an 1863 Christmas visit to the Nevada territory when he influenced the career of Mark Twain. Born Charles Farrar Brown in 1834 in Maine, the future Artemus Ward lost his father when young and became an apprentice printer at age thirteen. Eventually, Brown graduated to reporter and comic columnist during a career that took him to Ohio.

William Wright, aka Dan De Quille

Most who knew William Wright, a colleague of Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) on Virginia City’s Territorial Enterprise, believed that of the two, Wright was the most likely to succeed. Instead, Twain went on to achieve immediate national and international fame while Wright, nineteenth-century Nevada’s most important literary figure, slipped into obscurity until recently.

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