The Territorial Enterprise newspaper out of Virginia City, Nevada, began in 1858 with owners William Jernegan and Alfred James. The paper became its most infamous in the 1860's under the ownership of Joseph Goodman who was responsible for hiring such famous contributors as Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) and Dan De Quille (William Wright). Denis E. McCarthy co-owned the publication with Goodman for a short time and C.C. Goodwin, Fred Hart, James Gally (writing as SingleLine),and Rollin Daggett all called the paper home.

The Enterprise became one of the most colorful and widely-read frontier newspapers of its time, shaping both Western journalism and American literary humor. It was the birthplace of the Sagebrush School of Writing, the main hub for its style, mixing journalism with literary flair. Writers blended fact with fiction, often using hoaxes, parodies, and sarcasm to both entertain and provoke. 

The paper is most famous for giving Mark Twain his first serious job as a writer in 1862. Writing for the Enterprise, Samuel Clemens adopted his now-iconic pen name. Twain wrote satirical columns, invented stories, and covered local mining booms and busts, scandals, and Virginia City's dramatic social life. Twain's experience in Virginia City is where he developed the voice that would later influence classics like Roughing It and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

With Virginia City being the center of the Comstock Lode and one of the richest strikes in U.S. history, writers for the Enterprise gave detailed, often exaggerated or humorous accounts of mine speculation, claims jumping, engineering feats, and the chaotic economy. The paper used these wild accounts to entertain locals and to promote the "West" back "East", selling the dream of wealth and adventure to entice new prospectors.

The paper was famous for reporting on brothels, saloons, bar fights, duels, conmen, and corruption. There were ghost stories, hauntings, and wild tales to thrill readers. It struck a balance between informing, mocking, and entertaining, a formula that kept locals loyal and drew attention from across the nation.

The Territorial Enterprise wasn't just a newspaper, it was a cultural force that mixed hard news with humor. At its peak in the 1860s, under Goodman with writers like Twain and DeQuille, it helped define the 'West' as we imagine it today and left its mark on American literature and culture.

Mark Twain Journal: Life After Twain: The later careers of the Enterprise Staff by Lawrence I. Berkove. Volume 29, Number 1, Spring, 1991

"To find a petrified man, or break a stranger's leg, or cave an imaginary mine, or discover some dead Indians in a Gold Hill tunnel, or massacre a family at Dutch Nick's, were feats and calamities that we never hesitated about devising when the public needed matters of thrilling interest for breakfast. The seemingly tranquil ENTERPRISE office was a ghastly factory of slaughter, mutilation and general destruction in those days."
- Mark Twain's Letters from Washington, Number IX, Territorial Enterprise, March 7, 1868