Tonopah Daily Bonanza (Tonopah, Nev.)
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
4,607 issues from 1906 to 1922, published in Tonopah, Nevada, digitised for Chronicling America.
William W. Booth launched the Tonopah [Nevada] Bonanza on June 15, 1901, less than a year after Big Jim Butler had discovered silver in a local outcropping near a spring the local Shoshone called “Tonopah.” The town had in that brief time reached a population of over a thousand souls. It was the last great gold and silver bonanza in the United States.
The story of the establishment of Tonopah’s first newspaper has all the ring of the rough and tumble democracy that characterized these mining camps. Everyone there knew the importance of a newspaper, not just to gather and distribute local news, but to celebrate the town, advertise its businesses, and, above all, promote the mines and the district to potential investors from New York to San Francisco. Butler’s young partner and future Nevada Senator, Tasker Oddie, called a town meeting for the purpose of raising funds to purchase a printing press. After the requisite money had been subscribed in the spirit of local boosterism, all that was needed was someone to run the paper. William Booth, the only printer in town, was supposedly “elected.” Under Booth’s management the Tonopah Bonanza flourished, “calm and prosperous,” first as a weekly, then, as both the town and the paper’s circulation grew, a daily.
Booth had newspapers in his blood. Before coming to Tonopah, he had managed and/or edited newspapers in the Nevada mining towns of Austin, Safford, and Candelaria. His father, John Booth, was the long-time proprietor of…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Tonopah, Nevada, United States
- Language
- English
- Collection
- Chronicling America
- Licence or status
- None stated by the archive
- Rights
- The Library of Congress believes that the newspapers in Chronicling America are in the public domain or have no known copyright restrictions. Newspapers published in the United States more than 95 years ago are in the public domain in their entirety.
- Credit
- Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities
- Who can read it
- Teens profiles and older (placed by Invisible Network from what the archive says; archives give no ratings)
- Archive
- Library of Congress