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Chronicling America
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Newspaper The Drill (Pinal City, Pinal County, Ariz. Territory) 1880-1880 Pinal drill

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About The Drill (Pinal City, Pinal County, Ariz. Territory) 1880-1880

In May 1880, James D. Reymert and James Head started the weekly Drill in Pinal, a town previously named Picket Post that had been established near Silver King Mine, the "richest silver mine in the world" (December 17, 1881). By September 1880 Head left the paper, and Reymert, who also had a law practice and mining interests, became the sole proprietor. Reymert was a founder in 1847 of Nordlyset, the first Norwegian language newspaper published in the United States. Other Drill staff included Harry Brook with his "piquant pen" and Prisciliano Gómez with "typographical perfection" (May 20, 1882).

The Drill became the Pinal Drill on January 1, 1881. Starting at four pages, it increased to eight in May 1881, adding reprinted news, more advertisements, and syndicated literary columns like "The Hearth Stone." Primarily a mining paper, it wrote extensively about area mines like Silver King, the Good Joke, and Hardscrabble. The newspaper office provided lists of mines for sale, like the Grandfather, the Babe, and the Gnome.

Awarded the county printing contract, the Drill was designated "The Official Paper of the County of Pinal" in February 1881, but sometimes the Board of Supervisors broke the contract in favor of the Arizona Weekly Enterprise in Florence, the county seat. The Drill wrote of the Board's "long standing spite…towards Pinal" (July 29, 1882), accusing it of "spending our money for the benefit of Florence" (September 9, 1882). In part due to the Drill's political advocacy, a "Reform Ticket" of candidates was formed to "remove that political clique, which has so long run this county to its detriment" (September 30, 1882).

Journalistic feuds played out in the Drill and the Enterprise. In 1882, each newspaper printed escalating insults between Reymert and P. A. Brown, who called Reymert "that iniquitous cesspool of concentrated rottenness and falsehood" in a letter published in the Florence paper (Arizona Weekly Enterprise, July 15, 1882). The Drill, in turn, referred to "pabrown" as a "sneaking snivel of a sanctimonious skunk" (July 22, 1882). In 1883, Reymert and Thomas Weedin, the Enterprise editor and owner, sparred in another round of name-calling and libel suits.

The Drill reflected xenophobic attitudes toward Chinese immigrants and Native Americans, using derogatory terms when reporting on Chinese residents of Pinal and Chinese immigrants in general, and referring to "depradations" and "outbreaks" in articles about conflicts between white settlers and tribes in Arizona. Columns supported the Chinese Exclusion Act and called for the abolishment of Indian reservations, saying the tribes were "a dead load upon [the government]" (October 8, 1881).

Reymert announced that the issue of March 8, 1884, would be the last Drill, having sold the press to Francisco Dávila, who had plans to start the Spanish-language paper El Mercurio (the Mercury) in Phoenix. The Drill at first remained in Pinal a few more weeks, published by Dávila and subtitled "English-Spanish Weekly." Then Dávila announced he would discontinue the paper after all, move the press to Phoenix, and start El Mercurio, which then ceased publication by April 1885. In its first year, the Pinal Drill published a prediction: "Pinal is destined to be the largest City in Arizona within a very few years" (December 18, 1880). By the 1890s, however, Pinal was a ghost town.

Provided By: Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records; Phoenix, AZ

About this Newspaper

Title

  • The Drill (Pinal City, Pinal County, Ariz. Territory) 1880-1880

Other Title

  • Pinal drill

Dates of Publication

  • 1880-1880

Created / Published

  • Pinal City, Pinal County, Ariz. Territory : J.D. Reymert and J. Head

Headings

  • -  Pinal (Pinal County, Ariz.)--Newspapers
  • -  Pinal County (Ariz.)--Newspapers
  • -  Arizona--Pinal County
  • -  Arizona--Pinal (Pinal County)
  • -  United States--Arizona--Pinal--Pinal City

Genre

  • Newspapers

Notes

  • -  Weekly
  • -  Vol. 1, no. 1 (May 15, 1880)-v. 1, no. 32 (Dec. 25, 1880).
  • -  Pinal drill (DLC)sn 93061640 (OCoLC)27966964

Medium

  • volumes

Library of Congress Control Number

  • sn94052359

OCLC Number

  • 31383922

Succeeding Titles

Additional Metadata Formats

Availability

Rights & Access

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Cite This Item

Citations are generated automatically from bibliographic data as a convenience, and may not be complete or accurate.

Chicago citation style:

The Drill Pinal City, Pinal County, Ariz. Territory. (Pinal City, AZ), Jan. 1 1880. https://www.loc.gov/item/sn94052359/.

APA citation style:

(1880, January 1) The Drill Pinal City, Pinal County, Ariz. Territory. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/sn94052359/.

MLA citation style:

The Drill Pinal City, Pinal County, Ariz. Territory. (Pinal City, AZ) 1 Jan. 1880. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, www.loc.gov/item/sn94052359/.