Territorial Enterprise
The Territorial Enterprise, founded by William Jernegan and Alfred James on 18 December 1858, was a newspaper published in Virginia City, Nevada. Published for its first two years in Genoa in what was then Utah Territory, new owners Jonathan Williams and J. B. Woolard moved the paper to Carson City, the capital of the territory, in 1859.[1] The paper changed hands again the next year; Joseph T. Goodman and Denis E. McCarthy moved it again, this time to Virginia City, in 1860.[1][2]
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/2b/Antique_printing_press_at_the_Mark_Twain_Territorial_Enterprise_Museum%2C_Virginia_City%2C_NV.jpg/220px-Antique_printing_press_at_the_Mark_Twain_Territorial_Enterprise_Museum%2C_Virginia_City%2C_NV.jpg)
Noted author Mark Twain wrote for the paper during the 1860s along with writer Dan DeQuille. To cover for DeQuille, who took time off to visit his family in Iowa, the young Sam Clemens was hired. Located steps from the Enterprise offices, Mark Twain and Dan DeQuille, lifelong friends, shared a room at 25 North B St. in Virginia City.
The paper was owned and operated by the Blake family in the 1890s through the 1920s.
The paper went out of publication for a while and was revived by Helen Crawford Dorst in 1946 and was later purchased and revived by author, journalist, and railroad historian Lucius Beebe and his long-time companion and co-author Charles Clegg on 2 May 1952.[3] Clegg and Beebe sold the Territorial Enterprise in 1961.[4]
History
Joseph T. Goodman was owner and editor of the Territorial Enterprise in the 1860s. He was succeeded by William Sharon who hired Rollin Daggett as managing editor in 1874.[5] Charles Carroll Goodwin joined the staff in 1873, and was chief editor from 1875–1880, before moving on to The Salt Lake Tribune.
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/dc/Composing_table_at_the_Mark_Twain_Territorial_Enterprise_Museum.jpg/220px-Composing_table_at_the_Mark_Twain_Territorial_Enterprise_Museum.jpg)
Today
As of 2016, Thomas and Deborah Hayward are now the current owners of the Territorial Enterprise buildings and Mark Twain Museum at the Territorial Enterprise in Virginia City, Nevada.[citation needed]
Thomas Muzzio is president of the Territorial Enterprise Historical and Educational Foundation, which maintains a Web site dedicated to preserving the legacy of the Territorial Enterprise and the history of journalism in the West.[6]
Mark Twain Museum at the Territorial Enterprise
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a5/Mark_Twain%27s_desk_at_the_Mark_Twain_Territorial_Enterprise_Museum%2C_Virginia_City%2C_NV.jpg/220px-Mark_Twain%27s_desk_at_the_Mark_Twain_Territorial_Enterprise_Museum%2C_Virginia_City%2C_NV.jpg)
The Mark Twain Museum at the Territorial Enterprise, a separate entity from the above, operates a museum in the original Territorial Enterprise building in Virginia City, NV. The museum features the original desk used by Mark Twain when he was editor of the paper. Other exhibits include antique printing presses, an early Linotype machine, a proof press, stone composing tables (one of which Mark Twain and other employees of the paper used to sleep on), and various other antiques.[7][8]
On 16 April 2019, an edition of the Territorial Enterprise was found in a time capsule from 1872 in the cornerstone of a demolished Masonic lodge in Reno.[9][10]
Notes
- ^ a b Lee, James Melvin (1917). "Chapter 14" . History of American Journalism .
- ^ Territorial Enterprise On-Line Nevada Web site (http://onlinenevada.org/territorial_enterprise), Retrieved 9-24-2011.
- ^ Territorial Enterprise and Virginia City News, Volume 98, No. 18 (Friday, May 2, 1952). It was priced at 15 cents a copy. The front page stories included the successful Virginia City Art Week, an article on the notables who would be writing for the paper, and a piece about Virginia City in the 1870s.
- ^ "Territorial Enterprise Building," National Park Service Web site (http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/nevada/ter.htm), Retrieved 9-24-2011.
- ^ Ronald James (2009-03-20). "Territorial Enterprise". The Online Nevada Encyclopedia. Retrieved 2009-10-29.
- ^ "Mission Statement," Territorial Enterprise Historical and Educational Foundation Web site (http://www.territorial-enterprise.com/foundation/mission.html), Retrieved 9-23-2011.
- ^ "Mark Twain Museum at the Territorial Enterprise," VisitVirginiaCityNV Web site (http://www.visitvirginiacitynv.com/attractions_marktwain.aspx), Retrieved 9-24-2011.
- ^ "Mark Twain Museum at the Territorial Enterprise," Nevada Museums, Travel Nevada Web (http://museums.travelnevada.com/destination/mark-twain-museum-at-the-territorial-enterprise.aspx), Retrieved 9-24-2011.
- ^ "Reno's 1872 time capsule includes California Gold Rush lore". Associated Press. 17 April 2019.
- ^ "1872 time capsule from Masonic Lodge opened in Reno". 12 April 2019.
References
- Beebe, Lucius (1954). Comstock Commotion: The Story of the Territorial Enterprise and Virginia City News. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
External links
- Territorial Enterprise Building - includes museum contact, National Park Service
- Mark Twain Museum at the Territorial Enterprise - Visit Virginia City, Nevada
- HABS No. NV-15-9, "Mark Twain "Enterprise" Building, C Street, Virginia City, Storey County, NV", 1 photo
- Enterprise Publishing Company records. Enterprise Publishing Company (Virginia City, Nev.) creator. 1874-1911. Special Collections, University Libraries, University of Nevada, Reno.
- v
- t
- e
- The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today
- The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
- The Prince and the Pauper
- Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
- A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court
- The American Claimant
- Tom Sawyer Abroad
- Pudd'nhead Wilson
- Tom Sawyer, Detective
- Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc
- A Double Barrelled Detective Story
- A Horse's Tale
- The Mysterious Stranger
- Hellfire Hotchkiss
- "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County"
- "Cannibalism in the Cars"
- "A Literary Nightmare"
- "A Murder, a Mystery, and a Marriage"
- "The Great Revolution in Pitcairn"
- "1601"
- "The Stolen White Elephant"
- "Luck"
- "The Million Pound Bank Note"
- "A Double Barrelled Detective Story"
- "Those Extraordinary Twins"
- "The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg"
- "A Dog's Tale"
- "Extracts from Adam's Diary"
- "The War Prayer"
- "Eve's Diary"
- "Extract from Captain Stormfield's Visit to Heaven"
- "My Platonic Sweetheart"
- "Advice for Good Little Girls"
- Mark Twain's (Burlesque) Autobiography and First Romance
- Sketches New and Old
- Mark Twain's Library of Humor
- Merry Tales
- The £1,000,000 Bank Note and Other New Stories
- The $30,000 Bequest and Other Stories
- "The Awful German Language"
- "On the Decay of the Art of Lying"
- "Advice to Youth"
- How to Tell a Story and Other Essays
- "Concerning the Jews"
- "To the Person Sitting in Darkness"
- "Edmund Burke on Croker and Tammany"
- "What Is Man?"
- "The United States of Lyncherdom"
- "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses"
- Letters from the Earth
- Territorial Enterprise letters
- Letters from Hawaii
- The Innocents Abroad
- Roughing It
- Old Times on the Mississippi
- A Tramp Abroad
- Life on the Mississippi
- Following the Equator
- Is Shakespeare Dead?
- Autobiography of Mark Twain (Chapters from My Autobiography)
- King Leopold's Soliloquy
- The Private History of a Campaign That Failed
- Christian Science
- "Some Thoughts on the Science of Onanism"
- "Votes for Women"
and events
- Mark Twain Prize for American Humor
- Mark Twain Tonight!
- The Adventures of Mark Twain (1944)
- The Adventures of Mark Twain (1985)
- Mark Twain (2001 documentary)
- Twain and Shaw Do Lunch (2011 play)
- Mark Twain: The Musical
- Olivia Langdon Clemens (wife)
- Susy Clemens (daughter)
- Clara Clemens (daughter)
- Jean Clemens (daughter)
- John M. Clemens (father)
- Jane Lampton Clemens (mother)
- Orion Clemens (brother)