JOSEPH E. JOHNSON: AUTHOR OF FRONTIER NEWS, PROMOTION, AND PROGRESS

News editors of the frontier usually mixed together short items on travel, neighboring settlements, politics, editorial commentary, and advertisements, driven by patron political interests and the desire for community growth.2 In this process, editors functioned as open promoters, not expected to restrain their views with the lens of impartiality-nor expecting in return that readers would question the bright future that they saw as destiny.1 This brought newspapers into a kind of alliance with railroad companies as both sides campaigned to increase the population in support of their own economic and social interests, with news editors doing the promoting and railroads bringing people and trade prospects.4 But all of this depended on the cultural backdrop of "manifest destiny" at the time, a composite of American dreams for progress generally equated with the advancement of white settlement westward. By his own account, he built the first house (other than a log cabin) in what is now Pottawattamie County in 1848.8 Kanesville, Iowa, was renamed Council Bluffs City in 1853, part of a public campaign led by Johnson.9 He is said to have used his influence to establish Nebraska's territorial capital at Omaha rather than Bellevue in 1855.\n That being said, perhaps it seems strange that a man who so strongly advocated the development of a town on the frontier should leave it so soon.