A moving Deseret News story

SALT LAKE CITY — The nicest thing about the recent four-block move of the Deseret News to the Triad Center is that the printing press stays put in West Valley City. In the beginning — meaning back in 1850 — the Deseret News and the printing press were basically synonymous and had to move together.

Utah photo historian Ron Fox recently scanned a number of historic photographs from the Deseret News Archives of the Deseret News homes and staff over its 160-year history.

If you want to see in person what the Deseret News' first headquarters looked like, there is a replica at This Is the Place Heritage Park. The original home was a small adobe shack on South Temple, just east of Main Street. That shack was usually referred to as the territorial mint building. One Utah wit, Scipio Africanus Kenner, said it "was almost as easy to get on top of as into."

The small "Ramage" press squeezed out the first Deseret News on June 15, 1850, with President Willard Richards, second counselor in the First Presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as the first editor. That press still exists, tucked into an obscure corner of the Church History Museum.

Less than a year later, in 1851, the paper (and press) moved a few yards to the west into the Deseret Store Building, a three-story adobe structure on the northeast corner of South Temple and Main Street, where the Joseph Smith Memorial Building stands today. The biggest problem with that location was keeping the store customers from messing with the press.

Three years later, everything moved a few feet to the north into the Tithing Office Building, a low adobe building. That worked for a few years. Then everything was hauled across the street to the southwest corner of South Temple and Main Street into the Council House, where the Territorial Legislature met and where Mormon temple ordinances were performed at one time.

It took an army to move the Deseret News next. The Utah War forced it south to Fillmore for about five months — the first Fillmore issue appearing on May 5, 1858. In September, it was back to the Council House for four more years.

The next 41 years were spent back across the street in the Deseret Store Building.