News celebrates 156th birthday

The Deseret Morning News, the oldest registered business in Utah and one of the West's oldest newspapers, will quietly celebrate its 156th birthday today.

The newspaper printed its first edition on a small hand press in the adobe territorial mint building in Salt Lake City on June 15, 1850. That first edition included some 300 copies with eight pages each. Willard Richards was the newspaper's founding editor.

In that first edition of the "News," the U.S. Senate was debating the "dissolution of the Union." A "terrible fire" in San Francisco had caused millions of dollars in property damage.

And "flour, wheat, corn meal, butter, cheese, tallow and pork" could be exchanged for copies of "the News" at the paper's office.

The paper has weathered 12 different homes and myriad technological changes while covering world, national and neighborhood news for more than 15 1/2 decades