SCARCE TRANS-CONTINENTAL NEWSPAPER

TRANS-CONTINENTAL NEWSPAPER. San Francisco, California. June 25, 1870. This is issue #7, printed at San Francisco, Cal., Saturday, June 25, 1870.

The TRANS-CONTINENTAL was a stroke of historical genius in the mind of its editor, W.R. Steele. “On May 24, 1870 over 130 passengers, most members and family of the Boston Board of Trade, boarded a beautiful eight car Pullman train built under special orders of George M. Pullman specifically for this trip, the first chartered excursion by rail from Atlantic to Pacific. On board was carried a quarto-medium Gordon Press which printed 12 issues of the trans-continental, each at a different point along the round-trip journey.” The TRANS-CONTINENTAL is considered the very first newspaper composed, printed & published on a train. This issue is the San Francisco issues, but others would be datelined Niagara Falls, Omaha, Cheyenne, Ogden, Utah Salt Lake City, Utah; Summit Sierra Nevada, Promontory Point, Utah; Laramie, Wyoming; Grand Island Nebraska, Burlington, Iowa; and Boston.

The front page of the June 25, 1870 issue has a poem titled CALIFORNIA. The following 3 pages contain Notes from our Log Book, advertisements, listing of passengers on board; Telegraphic, the Farewell Dinner menu; an illustration of the Cosmopolitan Hotel and the payout of a game of chance benefiting the Mercantile Library Association.

Four pages (7 x 9 ¾ inches). Fabulous letter head of a steam locomotive and train with the PULLMAN PACIFIC CAR COMPANY highlighted on one car. Slight stain to top left corner border of newspaper not affecting illustration. Quite rare and in vg cond.