The Livingston Enterprise Archive

On June 6, 1883, George H. Wright and Joseph E. Hendry of Livingston, Montana, published the first edition of the Livingston Enterprise on 7x10-inch sheets. This 5-column, 4-page weekly began publishing the same year that the Northern Pacific Railway arrived. In addition, they published the Daily Enterprise, from June 4, 1883, through November 8, 1884. While they stated that the daily edition would resume in 1885, it did not reappear until 1910.

Early issues of the Enterprise featured a plethora of real estate ads, reports of mining activity in nearby Emigrant Gulch, Northern Pacific timetables, and activities on the Crow Reservation, which was located immediately east of the town. The Northern Pacific placed its largest repair shops west of the Mississippi in Livingston, and the reporting reflected the influence of the railroad on the town's development. For example, from 1885 to 1890 the paper featured stories about "Chinamen" who were importing and selling opium in "hop joints." The newspaper also documented the establishment of Cinnabar, the terminus of the Northern Pacific branch line to Yellowstone National Park.

In the late 1890s, the Anaconda Copper Mining Company purchased the Livingston Enterprise, part of an effort to exercise its influence over newspaper publishing in the state.