| Show UTAH PRESS ASSOCIATION Mr Alterexhaustive research His book contained the names of more than200 editors and publishers and traced the history of 326 early papers His work was underwritten by the Utah State Historical Society which in turn was functioning with depression-era Federal dollars Said Alter at times tongue-in-cheek following completion of the book The labor involved in the gathering and preparation of the material for this monograph proved to be so prodigious it would have been abandoned when its intricacies first appeared had it been in production for profit even though it promised best seller prospects And it would not have been completed aslabor of love had all its proportions and problems been revealed at one time Begun five or six years ago at which time most of the work was done and many of the cuts were made the work was stalemated for four years due to the curtailment of the Societyregularly appropriated funds To accomplish the task of compiling this work Alter continued every book of history travel biography diary gazetteer and directory in print was gleaned for references including scores of photostat pages from volumes available only in distant repositories Every city and town in Utah that has now or ever has hadnewspaper was visited and fromfew hours to several days time were spent searching the existing newspaper files and canvassing the place forlook at stray volumes or single copies of old newspapers and interviewing old settlers Every column of every Utah newspaper still preserved has thus been minutely examined for material concerning the Utah newspapers themselves and mention of their contemporaries he concluded That so many early papers disappeared is made understandable by the realization that towns too were erased from the landscape In each of these communitiesnewspaper was once printed And in each of them the population either fell to the point wherepaper couldnexist or the town itself simply ceased to exist Alta Altonah Bicknell Bingham Canyon Blanding Centerville Clear Lake Corrine Elsinore Ferron Frisco Garfield Gold Hill Huntington Hyrum Ibapah Junc28 Digital image 2005 Marriott Library University of Utah Al rights reserved |
