by Worcester P. Bong
Since the founding of Fort Whipple in 1863 and the town of Prescott in 1864, local citizens and military personnel have enjoyed reading locally printed newspapers. Newspaper names ranged from Arizona Miner to Prescott Journal-Miner, and from Prescott Evening Courier to today’s The Daily Courier. Fort Whipple started printing the Arizona Miner in March 1864. Two other newspapers, The West’s Recall and The Whipple Echo, were also published locally.

The West’s Recall was published between March 1919 and January 1920, when Fort Whipple became Whipple Barracks, US Army General Hospital No. 20. After hospital operations were transferred from the US Army to the US Public Health Service in February 1920, a different monthly one-page newsletter was published, but was discontinued shortly thereafter. It was not until the Veterans Bureau took over hospital operations in April 1922 that the hospital again published a weekly newspaper.