It was in this setting that the Weekly Arizonian made its debut at Tubac on 3 March 1859. From its first issue, the Arizonian’s avowed policy was to promote the resources of the area, and secure a separate government for Arizona. It was a four-page tabloid printed on a Washington hand press. The press had been shipped from Ohio by William Wrightson of the Santa Rita Mining Company. It had traveled by ship down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, across the Gulf to Panama, through the Sea of Cortez to Guaymas, and thence by ox-cart to Tubac. It took about two months to set up shop for the newspaper. Edward Ephraim Cross, who had journalistic experience in Cincinnati, assumed the mantel of editor. He had been in Tubac since November 1858, and had been sending dispatches to Eastern newspapers. He was virtually the sole source of information about Arizona to the outside world.
Cross soon ran afoul of Sylvester Mowry, the most prominent citizen in Tubac, the bone of contention being Mowry’s allegedly exaggerated population estimates of Arizona and the territory’s presumed agricultural potential. Mowry had recently retired from the Army at Fort Yuma, and was twice elected as delegate to Washington for the proposed territory of Arizona, but Congress, not recognizing Arizona as an organized territory, refused to seat him. Cross and Mowry, who agreed on their aspirations for the development of Arizona, but represented rival mining interests, settled their differences in a bloodless duel on 8 July 1859.
Cross’s aggressive editorial policy continued to bring political pressure on the mining company which owned the Arizonian. Sylvester Mowry and his friend William Oury purchased the newspaper for $2,500 on 21 July 1859. Cross lingered in Tubac for a while, but with the outbreak of the Civil War, he returned to his native New Hampshire, took a colonel’s commission, and died of wounds at the battle of Gettysburg in 1863.
In April 1860 this office published the Constitution of the Provisional Government of the Territory of Arizona, and the proceedings of the convention in Tucson. This was the first book published in Arizona. Two months later the newspaper suspended publication, perhaps due to Wells’ other political commitments.
Charles Strong, a printer from New York, and T.M. Turner, a journalist from Ohio, entered into a six-month agreement to revive the Arizonian as publisher and editor respectively. Little is known of the paper’s continued troubles, but Turner quit within a month and in his farewell issue advertised a pair of Pocket Derringers, apparently standard armament for editors in those days. He should have kept them, for he was murdered in Las Vegas six months later. The paper limped on without the financial support it had expected, and suspended publication a second time in September 1861.
Although no newspaper was being published in Tucson, the press of the Arizonian was used in 1865 to publish the Territory’s first known Spanish document, a translation of the Howell Code adopted by the First Legislature in 1864. The Arizonian was no more on april 29, 1871.
The old Tubac press which had inaugurated the history of printing in Arizona went on to launch the Tucson Arizona Star in 1877, the Tombstone Nugget in 1879 and the Tombstone Epitaph in 1880. In 1933 the Epitaph editor donated the relic to the Arizona Historical Society in Tucson, and the press was later put on display at the Tubac Presidio State Historic Park. In 1959 Frank Giffen printed four centennial commemorative issues of the Arizonian which were mailed from Tubac. In 1957 Edward Cross was inducted into the Arizona Newspapers Association Hall of Fame, as was Pierson Dooner in 1996.
