Member-only story
A town with two persons
The editor and the postmaster were its entire population
In our struggle to keep up with all the nonfiction writing published every day, we often lose sight of the remarkable articles and essays of the past. Many of them are worth remembering. The piece you can read below is one such notable work. I first read it on the front page of the January 15, 1900, edition of the Evening Report newspaper of Lebanon, Pennsylvania. It bore no byline and appears to have been previously published in the Abilene (Kansas) Reflector.
“I had an experience once in running a newspaper which has never been duplicated by any other man in the world,” said C. H. Pattison. “For three months I ran a weekly paper in a town with two inhabitants — the postmaster and myself. It was in Congress, Colorado. That was a boom mining town in 1883 and the miners flocked in there by the hundreds on account of a ‘strike.’ Claims were gobbled up like hotcakes.
“Under the mining law, after $500 worth of work is done on a claim it is necessary to insert a legal notice in a newspaper of general circulation for a period of three months. My father held an office in San Juan County, and while out visiting him I saw an opportunity to lease a newspaper plant and make a lot of money running legal notices. I did so. For several months I did a land office business…
