Newspapers of Utah collection

Joseph Ellis Johnson was the promotor of several newspapers including the Silver Reef Miner. As mining began to boom, the newspaper became independent and appeared six days a week.

Joseph Carpenter seemed to have taken up the publishing task following Joseph Ellis Johnson. He experimented with a couple of efforts as a teenager and then in 1878 produced The Union. It was renamed The Union and Village Echo in 1882. In 1879, Carpenter undertook a daily newspaper called The Evening Telegram, which lasted only briefly.

John R. Wallis produced a weekly newspaper, the Washington County News from 1898 to 1900. He revived it in 1908 and continued to publish until 1933. In the interim, D. U. Cochrane of Oregon bought the Washington County News and published The Dixie Falcon for a year before leaving the area. The Dixie Falcon was largely a political paper with news from the national scene as well as from local correspondents in the county towns.

The Washington County News entered the journalism scene in 1908 and continued to publish until 1988 under several different owners. It is a source for much of the county’s twentieth century history.

The Deseret News, meant to be the voice of the State of Deseret (Utah), started publication in 1850. The newspaper is published in Salt Lake City, Utah. It is Utah’s oldest continuously published daily newspaper, and has the largest Sunday circulation in the state, and the second largest daily circulation.

There were other short-lived papers: the Southern Star in 1895; The Dixie Falcon in 1901; and The Dixie Advocate, also in 1901, which was renamed The Virgin Valley Enterprise about 1907.

The Latter-day Saints' Millennial Star, usually shortened to Millennial Star, was the longest continuously published periodical of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, being printed in England from 1840 until 1970, when it was replaced by the Church-wide Ensign.

Alder, Douglas D. and Brooks, Karl F. A History of Washington County From Isolation to Destination. 2nd ed., Zion Natural History Association, 2007, pp. 163-164.