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Show HISTORIANS ASK HELP IN FINDING EARLY UTAH NEWSPAPER EXTRAS j The night of April 7, I860, in Salt Lake City was cold and stormy. The Tabernacle was ' empty, the conference of the i L I) S Church had adjourned , until the next day. Wind was blowing hard it was late at night. Then the pounding of , pony's boofbeats broke through I the dark city. I When the animal was pulled 'to a stop, a rider of a familiar I face, whipping sleet from his I face, shouted with excitement into the dark night. It was Howard Eagan, rider from Rush Valley, carrying pouches of i n ail of the "Overland Pony Express." He made the last I Ml retell of 75 miles in 5 hours laid 15 minutes in snow and i rain. Another rider in red shirt, blue trousers and buckskin i jacket, pushing bis way from !the East, arrived in Salt Lake City two days later. Thus began be-gan a year and a half of excited riding of the Pony Express over its 1900 mile train from St. Joseph, Mo., to Sacramento, .'ive days; in October, almost ! daily. The news was big and important. Sometimes items were read at special "news conferences." con-ferences." Publish'ng of the extras proved expensive. This financial finan-cial problem, together with the arrival of the transcontinental telegraph in Salt Lake City from the East on Oct. 17, 1861, brought The Pony Dispatch to an end. j Nevertheless, The Pony Dispatch Dis-patch was a remarkable newspaper. news-paper. Curiously enough only only copy, that of Thursday, Oct. 3, 1861, has been preserved in the New York Public Library. Lib-rary. Not one copy is in possession pos-session of the State of Utah (Utah State Historical Society, Church Historian'b Library, or University of Utah Library). The Journalism Department of the University of Utah is searching for copies of Tho Pony Dispatch. Sons and daughters of tho great pioneers, who came into Ill's valley in Calif. Tlrs fantastic improvement I in commun ;cat ions of the East with the WojI caused, among other things, changes to The Oesoret News and a birth of an amazing but short life. of news-sheet news-sheet "extras," known as The I'ony Dispatch. At this time The Deserel News was a weekly paper. As the news from the war-threatened East arrived by Pony Express, Ex-press, the News began to print the "Extras." Elias Smith, an ed:tor of the News, stood waiting wait-ing many items thruout the night for the arrival of the I'ony Express to get out the extras on the next morning. By summer of 1861, the Pony Dispatch appeared about every the middle of the last century to build an empire, ore urged I to join in the search. The Pony Dispatch is a valuable valu-able link in the history of the press in Utah. Nearly 95 years have passed since the first copy was set in typo and printed. Some of these copies must be still here. Maybe they are covered cov-ered with dust in your attic, or may be among "unimportant" "unimport-ant" things In some old trunks which you- wanted to throw away many times. If you find a copy you are urged to write or send it to the Journalism Department De-partment of the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, care of Joseph T. Houbicek, who Is working on the history of The Pony Dispatch. |