Saturday, May 23, 2009

print history


Eureka, NV has very many virtues - it is still a relatively prosperous little community, because it still has mines nearby - not just gold, but precious stones (staying in the Jackson House hotel, which is being slowly renovated, but is stuck somewhere between 1880 and 1960), my room was the Ruby Room, named not after some saloon courtesan but after the gem itself.   And it's remaking itself, in a quiet way, as a model of a western mining town: it still has its court house, its opera house, a number of old brick buildings - and the little museum.   And this museum is in the offices of the old town newspaper, the Eureka Sentinel.    What is particularly wonderful about this is that no one ever cleaned it up, and the walls are still covered in the posters that were printed on the machinery (still in place), and the notices, and the occasional news story, that were produced in this room.   The whole room is a testimony to the crowded visual appearance of popular print - not as reconstituted, but for real.

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