Stagecoach Press was a small handpress exclusively devoted to printing fine books, pamphlets, and leaflets on Southwestern Americana. Jack D. Rittenhouse was the owner-publisher as well as the editor, pressman, and salesman for this small private press. Rittenhouse ventured into publishing as a hobby in the 1940s in Los Angeles, California where he owned the Jack Rittenhouse Advertising Agency. With experience in bookselling and advertisement he moved the Stagecoach Press (renamed in 1949) in the mid-1950s to Houston, Texas, before settling in 1962 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Jack Rittenhouse retired in 1978 and Stagecoach Press ceased to exist with Jack Rittenhouse's death in 1991.
From the guide to the Stagecoach Press Samples Collection, 1955-1988, (Fray Angélico Chávez History Library, Santa Fe, New Mexico, U.S.A.)
Jack DeVere Rittenhouse began printing in 1946 from Los Angeles before relocating to Sierra Madre, California in 1949, then Houston, Texas (1951-1962), and finally Santa Fe, New Mexico in 1962. He retired in 1978. His private press was originally known as the Jack Rittenhouse Advertising Agency before he changed the name to the Stagecoach Press in 1949. His first successful publication was a book entitled, The Man Who Owned Too Much (1958). Rittenhouse is deceased.
From the guide to the Jack D. Rittenhouse Papers, S1643. 1., 1949-1988 and undated, (Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library, Texas Tech University)
Jack D. Rittenhouse, book collector, publisher, and writer, was born in 1912, in Kalamazoo, Michigan. At age 4, he moved with his family to Rittenhouse Siding, Arizona, where his father worked as an irrigation engineer. As a young man, he returned east to attend Indiana State College.
Rittenhouse's literary career emphasized writing New Mexican history. He authored several books about New Mexico including the Santa Fe Trail: A Historical Bibliography (1971) and Route 66 (1946), a popular guide to the transcontinental highway. The Santa Fe Trail received critical acclaim and its press-run of about 2000 copies sold out in a little more than a year. Rittenhouse also started Stagecoach Press in 1951 and through it published more than fifty books about New Mexico and the American West. Rittenhouse was the president of the Historical Society of New Mexico from 1968-1972, headed the Museum of New Mexico Press, and was the western history editor for the University of New Mexico Press. Later in life, he was a rare book dealer. Rittenhouse died in Albuquerque in 1991.
From the guide to the Jack D. Rittenhouse Papers, 1970-1979, (University of New Mexico. Center for Southwest Research.)
