This shop features operating presses typical of those used in Arizona’s Territorial newspaper and working “job” shops. Shops like these provided Arizonans with newspapers, handbills, calling cards, invitations, posters, and any other printing need.

Many towns were so anxious to begin a newspaper that printers set up their presses outdoors under trees. One editor wrote that he produced the first issue of a town paper “seated upon the stump on an ancient oak …and with the top of a badly abused beaver hat for a table.”

The Print Shop is a Reconstruction of an 1890 shop in Phoenix. It contains a press printer, a Washington hand press, and numerous artifacts of the period. A print shop was of paramount importance to the community in the days before radio.