The Central Nevadan (Battle Mountain, Nev.)
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
1,192 issues from 1885 to 1907, published in Battle Mountain, Nevada, digitised for Chronicling America.
The Battle Mountain mining district was organized in 1866 after the discovery of copper in north Lander County. The name Battle Mountain was said to commemorate an 1857 battle between white settlers who had detoured from the established Humboldt River trail and the Western Shoshone and Northern Paiutes who attacked the settlers. Because there has never been any evidence of such a battle, this story may well be fictitious. The name “Battle Mountain” may simply commemorate the past tensions between white settlers and the local tribes who had inhabited the land for centuries.
The town of Battle Mountain became the rail head for the surrounding mining district. Its position as a regional entrepôt was strengthened in 1880 when the Nevada Central Railroad completed its line from Austin to Battle Mountain, a line connecting the silver mines in the Austin District with the Central Pacific’s main line.
The first paper in Battle Mountain was the Measure for Measure published by the eccentric and vitriolic William J. Forbes in 1873. When Forbes died in 1875, Measure for Measure did as well. Two more papers followed, the Battle Mountain Messenger and its rival the Lander Free Press, but by 1884, both had succumbed to the general depression in silver mining.
In 1885, in answer to public demand and promises of support, veteran newspaper publisher John H. Dennis inaugurated the Central Nevadan in January 1885. It was a four-page, six-column sheet selling for a yearly subscription of…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Battle Mountain, 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