Archived edition
Published 2026-09-18 · Arizona Territory, 1880–1912 · 20 stories
Mesa Free Press · November 19, 1897
Captain William Kessel navigates 1,100 miles by sun and stars alone
A small trading schooner bound for Alaska lost its compass in a Pacific storm, and its captain steered home by the stars in a feat seafaring men called marvelous — a forgotten piece of maritime heroism.
Mesa Free Press · November 26, 1897
A brief published note of gratitude from the Wadlington family following the death of their young son, printed alongside the paper's own account of the tragedy.
Mesa Free Press · June 29, 1900
A legal notice from a Mesa City rancher seeking the owner of a stray horse and payment of pasturage fees, offering a glimpse of frontier property law in practice.
Mesa Free Press · November 26, 1897
A brief, sorrowful account of a toddler's accidental poisoning death in Mesa in 1897 — an ordinary tragedy of the kind local papers of the era recorded with real tenderness, long since lost to history.
Mesa Free Press · June 29, 1900
A cluster of small local notices from Mesa, Arizona: a doctor's new post at a mining camp, the wedding of a well-known Arizona militia officer, and the birth of a daughter to a local family.
Mesa Free Press · November 19, 1897
Plans to terrace the mountainside, lay new trails, and add tourist facilities at a Southern California mountain resort, as reported in a routine local improvement notice.
Mesa Free Press · June 29, 1900
A society anecdote from a New York poker game describes a wealthy woman staking a huge sum on a straight flush against a bachelor gambler, in a tale meant to illustrate Gilded Age recklessness with money.
Mesa Free Press · November 19, 1897
A federal judge in Indian Territory ruled that published notices to non-resident divorce defendants were legally worthless, a decision that threatened to invalidate hundreds of subsequent remarriages if upheld on appeal.
Mesa Free Press · November 19, 1897
A New Orleans steamship departed for Liverpool with what was claimed to be the largest general cargo ever floated, a striking record of the cotton export trade now long forgotten.
