Dan De Quille

Dan De Quille arrived on the Comstock in 1859, the same year the first silver discoveries were made, and remained for almost forty years watching its history unfold. As a senior newspaper reporter, De Quille took a young Samuel Clemen's under his wing at the Territorial Enterprise (where the name Mark Twain first appeared in print), and the two fed off each other's acerbic humor and established a tremendous following of readers. De Quille's reporting of Comstock activities and humorous stories...See more

Dan De Quille arrived on the Comstock in 1859, the same year the first silver discoveries were made, and remained for almost forty years watching its history unfold. As a senior newspaper reporter, De Quille took a young Samuel Clemen's under his wing at the Territorial Enterprise (where the name Mark Twain first appeared in print), and the two fed off each other's acerbic humor and established a tremendous following of readers. De Quille's reporting of Comstock activities and humorous stories were often repeated in other newspapers throughout the old west, and some of his fabricated hoax tales obtained international fame. Being the most prominent newspaper reporter at the time in Virginia City, De Quille had his finger on the pulse of the region, and had direct access to the mines and people, making him eminently qualified as the authoritative author for a history book about the Comstock silver mining boom. See less