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Features an engraving of the mining town of Salida, Colorado...
Features an engraving of the mining town of Salida, Colorado...
Item # 705992
May 13, 1882
MOUNTAIN MAIL, Salida, Colorado, May 13, 1882
* Very rare old West title
* Town view illustration
Printed in the masthead is: "Colorado Produces Millions of Silver, and Silver Is King." A very rare title, as there are no institutions noted in Gregory (Union List of American Newspapers) which have any holdings of this title. The holdings of the only one listed (Kansas St. Hist. Soc.) was purchased by us.
This newspaper would change its name in 1885 to the "Mail", of which 3 institutions have holdings, the earliest from 1889. The town of Salida was founded just two years previously in 1880. Today the 5200 pop. community is basically a tourist destination.
The top half of page 2 features a very nice engraving captioned: "Salida, Colorado, Looking North-West From the Foot of First Street." It is a nice engraving showing the small town with the Rocky Mountains in the background.
An accompanying note mentions: "In to-day's paper we present an engraving of a bird's-eye view of Salida...The drawing was not what the artist promised us, and the engraving is not what we had a right to expect, yet the general view of the town & surroundings is such as to give a pretty correct idea of how the land lays."
Four pages, an archival repair near the top barely touches the sky in the engraving, archivally rejoined at the spine, very nice condition.
AI notes: The May 13, 1882 issue of the Mountain Mail, published in Salida, Colorado, was part of a weekly newspaper founded in 1880 during the height of the Colorado Silver Boom. Serving as a key source of local news, mining reports, and community information, the paper catered to Salida’s rapidly growing population and the surrounding mining districts. Its masthead emphasized Colorado’s mineral wealth, famously proclaiming “Colorado Produces Millions of Silver, and Silver is King,” reflecting the region’s economic focus. The May 13 edition would have included a mix of local happenings, advertisements for goods and services, notices of social events, and updates on mining developments, characteristic of frontier newspapers of the era. Today, this issue is considered rare, preserved in digitized form through the Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection and occasionally available through specialty rare newspaper dealers, providing modern researchers with a window into daily life, commerce, and the mining culture of Salida in the early 1880s.
Category: The Old West
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$242.00
