The Gering Courier, which I have conducted personally from that day to this, was first issued on April 27, 1887, and was a patent inside sheet with the two outside pages printed "at home." The honor of being the pioneer in the North Platte valley was not easily achieved for less than a week later the Minatare Trumpet appeared, its publisher being John F. Ringler. Neither the Trumpet nor my own paper were established with any large vision of the later greatness of the North Platte valley. For my own part, the fact that the country

HISTORY OF WESTERN NEBRASKA

was being settled by homesteaders and that they would in due time need to spend money for publishing notices for final proof was the impelling motive. Indeed, this source of revenue was all which enabled my embryo business to survive through a period of years until real development began to take place. The original plant of the Courier consisted of an Army press, one of those affairs which sets on a table and is operated like a clothes wringer, printing one page at a time, and a mere handful of type and necessary cases. This outfit, a lot of groceries for the only store in the North river valley, a couple or three trunks and a number of other articles were only enough to make a moderate sized wagon box full which Avas hauled out for me, and with me, from Sidney, seventy miles across country.

Final proof notices were the first objective in the establishment of newspapers, but closely thereafter came the county seat question, as it became probable that the old county of Cheyenne would be divided into several counties, and was responsible for a number of papers at prospective county seats, notably in what are now Scott Bluff and Banner counties.