PRINTED ON THE TRAIN”: THE FIRST TRANS-CONTINENTAL NEWSPAPER, ISSUED EN ROUTE, 1870

1870. Item #90

“PRINTED ON THE TRAIN”: THE FIRST TRANS-CONTINENTAL NEWSPAPER, ISSUED EN ROUTE, 1870

[RAILWAY PRINTING – STEELE, W. R. (ed.)]. The Trans-Continental. Published Daily on the Pullman Hotel Express, between Boston and San Francisco [caption title]. [Niagara Falls; Omaha; Cheyenne; Ogden; Salt Lake; Summit of the Sierras; San Francisco; Promontory Point; Laramie; Grand Island; Burlington; Boston: n.p.], May 24–July 4, 1870. Volume I, Numbers 1–12 (complete).
4to (25 x 17.5 cm). Dedication leaf from the editor to the Executive Committee of the Boston Board of Trade; 24 ff. Original publisher’s green cloth, covers stamped in gilt: “Boston Board of Trade 1870 Trans-Continental Excursion.” Spine cloth with bubbling and some instability; binding toned; internally clean overall, final leaf with early tape repairs to margins just touching text without loss. A sound and attractive survival of a notoriously ephemeral production. INVSUSRBG

A remarkable and exceptionally rare survival, widely regarded as the earliest sustained newspaper printed aboard a moving train, documenting the Boston Board of Trade’s transcontinental excursion of 1870. Edited by W. R. Steele and issued daily along the route, this paper was quite literally composed, set in type, and printed on the journey itself—“the press room… in the baggage car, and the compositor’s room in the smoker,” as later noted by Edward Eberstadt.

The issues record the progress of one of the earliest organized transcontinental rail journeys following completion of the railroad, combining reportage, travel narrative, and historical commentary on the regions traversed. The result is a vivid, contemporaneous account of post–Civil War expansion and the lived experience of long-distance rail travel at a transformative moment in American infrastructure and mobility.
Complete sets are of the utmost rarity, particularly in the original commemorative cloth binding prepared for participants of the excursion. The present example, bearing the Boston Board of Trade gilt stamp, represents a deluxe issue and a tangible artifact of one of the earliest “mobile printing offices” in American history—arguably the first book-form assemblage produced entirely in transit across the continent.
Reference: Howes S929; cf. Eberstadt, The Trans-Continental (1940).

Price: $8,000.00