MIDAS - Friends of Midas has donated historic newspapers to two neighboring historical organizations: the Battle Mountain Cookhouse Museum and the Friends of Tuscarora and Independence Valley.
To celebrate the recent grand opening of the Tuscarora Society Hall, Friends of Midas contributed to the Friends of Tuscarora and Independence Valley two original issues, published in 1881, of the Tuscarora newspaper titled The Times-Review. The newspapers are in pristine condition and feature intriguing glimpses into the businesses and social life of Tuscarora over 130 years ago.
"It's exciting that the Tuscarora Society Hall provides another venue for telling the history of northern Nevada," said Dan Bennett, president of Friends of Midas. "These newspapers offer tangible connections to the buildings and to Tuscarora's past."
An even older newspaper was given to the Battle Mountain Cookhouse Museum. Dated Sept. 7, 1878, this issue of the Battle Mountain Messenger is now the oldest original newspaper edition in the museum's collection. Also in excellent condition, the newspaper was donated to be used as both an exhibit artifact and a source of information about early Battle Mountain. "The histories of Battle Mountain and Midas are closely related," said historian Dana Bennett, a Friends of Midas trustee. "For example, the same guy who started the Battle Mountain Messenger also started a Midas newspaper, The Gold Circle Miner, in 1908. We would love to find an original issue of the Miner, so we knew that the Cookhouse Museum would welcome this rare Messenger."
Bennett is currently working on the history of Battle Mountain and is also the author of "A Century of Enthusiasm: Midas, Nevada, 1907-2007."
Both newspapers were founded by Mark W. Musgrove, an inveterate mining enthusiast, who followed boomtowns throughout northern Nevada in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. One of his first newspapers was the Messenger, which he sold soon after it began in 1877. He subsequently published newspapers in Belleville, Olinghouse, Contact, Ward, Ruby Hill, and Midas. For a time, Reno's Nevada State Journal employed him as that newspaper's mining editor, but he rarely stayed long in any one place. Musgrove disappeared from the northern Nevada story after the bust of Buckhorn, a short-lived mining camp he promoted southeast of Cortez around 1914.
Dan Bennett commented that the newspaper donations reflect the connections shared among the historical organizations of northern Nevada. "Over the years, Friends of Midas has benefited from the generosity of neighbors such as the Northeastern Nevada Museum in Elko and the Humboldt Museum in Winnemucca," he noted. "It's a pleasure to be able to provide a piece of history to other small organizations like ours."
Friends of Midas is a Nevada nonprofit corporation that qualifies as an educational organization under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Supported by memberships and donations, it is dedicated to the restoration and preservation of the history of Midas, Nevada and the surrounding area. Friends of Midas is a member of the American Association for State and Local History and the Nevada Museums Association.
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