Slinging Lead, Hot Type and the Truth

History tried to erase the courageous Arizona journalist, but her remarkable life and work as a publisher is a testament to her courage and her undefeatable spirit.

- JANA BOMMERSBACH

This isn't a story about a woman history ignored or forgot nor diminished. That wouldn't be news.

This is a story about a woman history tried to erase. Her enemies wanted to be sure she was buried-without a gravestone. And they almost got away with it.

I stumbled on Laura Nihell while visiting friends in Jerome, Arizona, on March 28, 2014. I picked up a book in their library written in 1964 by Herbert Young titled Ghosts of Cleopatra Hill: The Men Who Built Jerome.

Luckily, this wasn't an original copy, but one issued 37 years later, in 2001, when Alene Alder added her chapter on "Women of Cleopatra Hill." It was, of course, at the back of the book.

That's where I found Laura Nihell, described in 131 words.

Bells and whistles started going off. As a journalist, why didn't I already know about this woman, who had owned and edited a newspaper in Jerome in the early 1900s? Why wasn't she in the centennial book just published on the history of female journalists in Arizona? Even I'm in that book.

When I got back to Phoenix, my first stop was the Arizona Archives, one of the state's true treasures. They have everything you want to know about territorial days in that wonderful library-but not one word about Laura Nihell. They've never heard of her.

She wasn't in the Arizona Women's Hall of Fame. Or in the Arizona Room at the Phoenix Public Library. Or mentioned in any of the state's three university libraries.

Nothing.

I even found a publication of the Jerome Historical Society titled "Herstory of Jerome." There's not a hint about Laura Nihell.

So, 131 words was all she gets? I already knew that wasn't fair.

Because those 131 words had grabbed ahold of me and yelled, "Hi there, honey. Meet a bona fide Western heroine.

They told me Laura Nihell, a 52-year-old former teacher and married-into-a-goodfamily-mother-of-two-sons, had done something brave.