The Weekly Occidental — Nevada’s First Literary Journal

©2012 Clarence D. Basso

Some twenty nine years after its birth and demise, Comstock journalist Dan DeQuille recalled his association with the 1864 Weekly Occidental, the first literary journal published in the region that became Nevada. He said in the July 1893 issue of The Californian that the Weekly Occidental “was intended to constitute a sort of safety valve for the red-hot and hissing Comstock literary boiler.”

Although no known copies of the journal exist, several “exchanges” printed in other newspapers of the day have survived and they were collected and re-issued in 1988 in a limited edition book by Clarence D. Basso at Falcon Hill Press in Sparks, Nevada.

The contents of the limited edition book include a short story, a satirical piece about mine bosses, a piece on reporting with Mark Twain and more.

Book reviewer Sandra Macias said in the December 25, 1988, issue of the Reno Gazette-Journal, “Had it lasted, the paper might have become as well-known as the Territorial Enterprise.”

The long-out-of-print book, The Weekly Occidental —Nevada’s First Literary Journal, may now be read in this copyrighted PowerPoint presentation: The Weekly Occidental – Nevada’s First Literary Journal.

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