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When readers see the names Mark Twain and Dan De Quille, fake news may not be the first thing that comes to mind. But these legendary journalists were some of the original, and most prolific, fake news writers in the early years of Nevada’s history. Frontier Fake News puts a spotlight on the hoaxes, feuds, pranks, outright lies, witty writing, and other literary devices utilized by a number of the Silver State’s frontier newsmen from the mid-nineteenth through the early twentieth centuries. Often known collectively as the Sagebrush School, these journalists were opinionated, talented, and individualistic.

While Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens), who got his start at Virginia City’s Territorial Enterprise, and Dan De Quille (William Wright), who some felt was a better writer than Twain, are the most well-known members of the Sagebrush School, author Richard Moreno includes others such as Fred Hart, who concocted a fake social club and reported on its gatherings for Austin’s Reese River Reveille, and William Forbes, who enjoyed sprinkling clever puns with political undertones in his newspaper articles.

Moreno traces the beginnings of genuine fake news from founding father Benjamin Franklin’s “Supplement to the Boston Independent Chronicle, Number 705, March 1782,” a fake newspaper aimed at swaying British public opinion, to the fake news articles of New York and Baltimore papers in the early 1800s. But these examples are only a prelude to the amazing accounts of petrified men, freeze-inducing solar armor, magically magnetic rocks, blood-curdling massacres, and other nonsense stories that appeared in Nevada’s frontier newspapers and beyond.

In Reno Confidential, veteran Nevada historian Richard Moreno pulls back the curtain on the Biggest Little City to reveal eleven men and women who shaped its destiny—some celebrated, others nearly forgotten. Heavyweights like George Wingfield and William Harrah loom large, but Moreno digs deeper, spotlighting bold reformers, civil rights leaders, architects, club owners, and even underworld figures who steered Reno’s image in lasting ways.

From free-thinking mayor Edwin E. Roberts to trailblazing attorney Felice Cohn, from visionary designer Frederic DeLongchamps to colorful dealmakers working behind the scenes, these were the original influencers—long before social media—who used newspapers, politics, business, and sheer force of personality to leave their mark.

Lively, accessible, and rich with story, Reno Confidential brings the city’s past into sharp focus through eleven unforgettable characters whose ambitions, rivalries, and vision helped make Reno what it is today.