[Illustration: _Joseph T. Goodman, editor of the_ Territorial
Enterprise. _Courtesy of the New York Public Library._]
Nevada owes its first printing to W. L. Jernegan, who in partnership
with Alfred James established a weekly newspaper, the _Territorial
Enterprise_, at Genoa, then in western Utah Territory, on December
18, 1858. Jernegan had transported his printing equipment across the
Sierras from Yolo County, Calif.[126]
The earliest Nevada imprint in the Library of Congress dates
from 1862, the year after Nevada's establishment as a separate
Territory: _Second Annual Message of Governor James W. Nye, to the
Legislature of Nevada Territory, November 13, 1862. Together with
Reports of Territorial Auditor, Treasurer, and Superintendent of
Public Instruction._ Printed at Carson City by J. T. Goodman & Co.,
Territorial printers, this publication has 48 pages, not including
the title page printed on its yellow wrapper. Joseph T. Goodman was
not only involved with official printing at this time, but he was
also editing the _Territorial Enterprise_, which was then located
at Virginia City and had become a daily paper. He is perhaps best
remembered for launching Mark Twain on a literary career when he
employed him as a reporter in August 1862.[127]
Governor Nye's _Second Annual Message_ covers an important period of
national history. Strongly pro-Union, it gives an optimistic account
of the year's events in the Civil War and bestows high praise on
Lincoln's preliminary Emancipation Proclamation of September 22,
1862: "As an engine of war, its formidability is a powerful warrant
of early peace, and as a measure of humanity, the enlightened world
receives it with acclamations of unbounded joy." Part of the message
concerns expected consequences from a bill recently passed by Congress
authorizing construction of a Pacific Railroad, which would profoundly
affect life in Nevada:
No State nor Territory will derive such inestimable
advantage from the road as the Territory of Nevada.
Situated, as we are, in what, during a great portion of
the year, is an almost inaccessible isolation of wealth;
with mountains covered with perpetual snow frowning down
directly upon us at the west, and with a series of ranges,
difficult to cross, at the east of us, with a wilderness
fit only for the original inhabitants of the waste,
stretching away a thousand miles, and intervening between
us and the frontier of agricultural enterprise; and with no
means of receiving the common necessaries of life, except
through the expensive freightage of tediously traveling
trains of wagons; the value of the road to us will be
beyond calculation.
The inscription "Library Depr State" on the Library of Congress copy
indicates it must have been submitted to the Department of State,
which in 1862 was still in charge of the United States Territories.
A date stamp on its wrapper suggests that it was transferred to the
Library of Congress by December 1900, while a stamp on page 2 reveals
that it was in custody of the Library's Division of Documents in
September 1907.
[Footnote 126: See Richard E. Lingenfelter, _The Newspapers of Nevada_
(San Francisco, 1964), p. 47-49.]
[Footnote 127: See Ivan Benson, _Mark Twain's Western Years_ (Stanford
University, Calif. [1938]), chapters 4-6.]