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UTAH PRESS ASSOCIATION lisher. The Tan's demise was described by Kenner in these terms: "Being unable to exude its virus as fast as the same was generated, it passed away through congestion of the spleen, unhonored, unwept and unsung." Its basis existed, though, until the troops at Camp Floyd were called for Civil War duty and the military post was abandoned. Renamed The Mountaineer, the paper was acquired August 27, 1859 by co-publishers James Ferguson and Seth M. Blair. Ferguson is described by contemporaries as "a fine writer," and Blair, a one-time Texas Ranger, would serve as the first United States District Attorney of Utah Territory. Other newspapers gradually emerged in the Territory. A weekly, the Union Vedette, was launched to serve Camp (later Fort) Douglas on November 20, 1863. It gained some general circulation, became a daily on January 5, 1864 and was published until 1868. Another daily appeared on the scene on July 4, 1864. Titled the Salt Lake City Daily Telegraph, it was published by Thomas B. H. Stenhouse. On October 8th it reduced to semi-weekly publication, continuing until 1869 when it was moved to Ogden and soon expired. Ogden, it will be remembered, was known as "the graveyard of Western journalism". Payson, which for many years would see newspapers come and go with regularity, gave birth to the first out-state weeklies. The Advocate and the Intelligencer, both started early in 1865, were short-lived, hand-written efforts. Manuscript publications were attempted in three communities, testament to the difficulty of obtaining printing equipment in a frontier territory well over a thousand miles from the western fringes of civilization. One was the Herald, which had a fleeting existence in Manti after a January 31, 1867 beginning under the direction of F. C. Robinson, who was also the County Clerk. Another, launched less than two months later by David Candland, and probably inspired by the Herald, was the Sanpitcher in Mt. Pleasant. It, too, ceased publication after a brief, albeit lauded, life. The third was the Weekly Gazette of American Fork, which made its bow March 11, 1868 and like the other handwritten editions, enjoyed but brief 52 |
