Much of what we know about San Diego’s first decade as an American town is found in the files of our first newspaper, the San Diego Herald. Original copies of the Herald are exceedingly rare but a complete file is preserved in Special Collections at the San Diego Public Library. We owe that complete file to the foresight of Ephraim W. Morse, who preserved a whole run and sold it to the library for $100 in 1901. The letter below documents that important transaction. The library’s run of the Herald was microfilmed many years ago and can be viewed at the San Diego Central Library. The newspaper has also been digitized and is available for research at the Internet site of the California Digital Newspaper Collection: https://cdnc.ucr.edu/