seat, and most towns of more than 500 or 1000 population sponsored one or more weekly newspapers. Politics was of major interest, with the editor-owner typically deeply involved in local party organizations. However, the paper also contained local news, and presented literary columns and book excerpts that catered to an emerging middle class literate audience. A typical rural newspaper provided its readers with a substantial source of national and international news and political commentary, typically reprinted from metropolitan newspapers. Comparison of a subscriber list for 1849 with data from the 1850 census indicates a readership dominated by property owners but reflecting a cross-section of the population, with personal accounts suggesting the newspaper also reached a wider non-subscribing audience. In addition, the major metropolitan daily newspapers often prepared weekly editions for circulation to the countryside. Most famously the Weekly New York Tribune was jammed with political, economic and cultural news and features, and was a major resource for the Whig and Republican parties, as well as a window on the international world, and the New York and European cultural scenes. The expansion of the Rural Free Delivery program, which allowed easier access to daily newspapers to rural areas of the United States in the early twentieth century, increased support for populist parties and positions. Newspapers of the Territories The first newspaper to be published west of the Mississippi was the Missouri Gazette. Its starting issue was published on July 12, 1808, by Joseph Charless, an Irish printer. Swayed by Meriweather Lewis to leave his home in Kentucky and start a new paper for the Missouri Territory, Charless was identified by the paper's masthead as "Printer to the Territory". The paper published advertisements for domestic help, notice for runaway slaves, public notices, and sales for merchandise like land plots or cattle. Newspapers like the Gazette were instrumental in the founding new territories and supporting their stability as they become states. In 1849, The Santa Fe New Mexican began its publication in Santa Fe in the New Mexico Territory. It has gone on to be the longest-running newspaper west of the Mississippi river, and the longest running paper in the West and Southwestern United States. It continues to be one of the most widely distributed papers in the U.S. state of New Mexico, along with the Albuquerque Journal (1880) and Las Cruces Sun-News (1881). With westward expansion other territories, like Nebraska, followed in