Why to Mind Your "p"s and "q"s, While Upside Down and Backwards

From the Tubac Presidio
State Historic Park booklet
on Letterpress Printing

That's the first printing press in Arizona. And that is Jim, coaxing it to do what it has done since 1859, doing what he has done more recently in more modern ways.

The Washington Hand Press was built by the Cincinnati Type Foundry Company, and it came to Tubac--about an hour's drive south of Tucson--first by barge down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to New Orleans, by ship to Indianola, Texas, then by wagon train through San Antonio and Ft. Bliss, to Tubac, where it printed the first newspaper in Arizona: The Weekly Arizonan.

The press made its way to Tucson, to grander duties, eventually to the Arizona Historical Society, and is now on loan, back to Tubac, again, where Jim and Elizabeth Pagels--in period clothing--tell its story, and print occasional items.

1859: Brahms First Piano Concerto was composed in 1859, and the French passed a law specifying that the A above Middle C should be set to a frequency of 435 Hz. Ground was broken for the Suez Canal, the Comstock silver load in Nevada was discovered, the first dog show was held in England, Joshua Abraham Norton, in San Francisco, proclaimed himself, Imperial Majesty Emperor Norton I, Emperor of the United States of America, John Brown led a raid on the federal arsenal in Harper's Ferry, Virginia, Charles Darwin published, "On the Origin of Species", Dickins, "A Tale of Two Cities" was published in periodical form in England, and in Tubac, the well-traveled Washington Hand Press published, "The Weekly Arizonan".

The Civil War happened soon, the press went on to other tasks, but it is operating still, just as it originally did, transforming laboriously set, individual characters, inked by a hand roller, onto sheets of paper.

Jim and Elizabeth will show you how it is done, now and then. It is a labor of love.

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