MIDLAND GAZETTE, Texas, Feb. 7, 1890 

* Very rare Southwest publication

This is the volume 1, number 35 issue of a title we've never offered previously. Quite rare, as Gregory's "History & Bibliography of American Newspapers" notes only two institutions as having any issues, one of which deaccessioned their holdings. This issue is from that institution (Bancroft Library).
Four pages, never bound nor trimmed, typical news & ads of the day, some minor margin tears, partial archival strengthening at the spine, good condition.

Background: The survival of this specific issue from February 1890 is highly significant because it captures Midland at a volatile, transformative crossroads just as the American frontier was officially closing. At this exact moment, West Texas was transitioning from a lawless, open-range cattle kingdom into a permanent, fenced agricultural and railroad economy—a shift heavily accelerated by a devastating drought in the late 1880s that forced local ranchers to reorganize. Because frontier weeklies like the Midland Gazette served as the primary economic boosters, legal records, and community lifelines for the entire region, this rare four-page artifact offers a raw, unvarnished look at how a fragile community of just 600 people negotiated land boundaries, railroad dependence, and social order. Furthermore, because it is one of the only surviving physical specimens of its kind—validated by its provenance from the Bancroft Library—it provides modern historians with rare primary source evidence of early Texas print culture that was almost entirely lost to time, fires, and fragile wood-pulp degradation.