The First Printing Press and California's First Newspaper
Near Monterey, California
Monterey gave California not one printing first but two. In eighteen thirty four a Mexican official named Agustin Zamorano brought a small iron printing press to Monterey, said to have come from Hawaii. It was the first press in California, and Zamorano used it to print proclamations, letterheads, and a book or two.
When the American navy seized Monterey in the summer of eighteen forty six, officers found that old press. Walter Colton, the town's new mayor, joined with a frontiersman named Robert Semple, and together they put the press back to work. On the fifteenth of August, eighteen forty six, they published the first issue of The Californian, the very first newspaper in California.
Paper was so scarce they printed it on sheets of cigarette paper, English text on one side and Spanish on the other. Its early issues carried news of the war with Mexico and early reports on the doomed Donner Party. Within two years the press moved north to the boomtown of San Francisco, and its printers abandoned it entirely for the gold fields.
