Authorities do not agree on when or by whom Montana's first printing was undertaken. It was either at Bannack or Virginia City, both gold-mining towns, probably in October 1863.[138]

The earliest Montana imprints in the Library of Congress were printed at Virginia City in 1866 by John P. Bruce, who owned The Montana Democrat and was designated Public Printer. Of these, the first may be an eight-page pamphlet, Reports of the Auditor, Treasurer, and Indian Commissioner, of the Territory of Montana. The latest document incorporated in the text is dated February 22, 1866, and the pamphlet was printed in the office of The Montana Democrat probably not long after that date. Most likely the second Montana imprint in the Library is the Message of Governor Thomas Francis Meagher, to the Legislature of Montana Territory, Delivered on the 6th Day of March, 1866. Three thousand copies were ordered, according to a printed note on the eighth and final page of this work. Neither of these two imprints bears any mark of provenance, and both appear to have entered the Library before the turn of the century.

Another early example of Montana printing in the Library is the 22d number, dated April 12, 1866, of The Montana Democrat, a sizable four-page sheet displaying the paper's motto: "Be faithful in all accepted trusts." It is addressed in pencil to the State Department. From about the same time the Library can boast two copies of Laws of the Teritory [sic] of Montana, Passed at the Second Session of the Legislature, 1866. Beginning March 5, 1866, and Ending April 14, 1866, a work of 54 pages. Although copy one is imperfect, lacking pages 49-54, it is of interest for the penciled inscription on its title page: "President Johnson."

The Library of Congress also owns three copies of a celebrated Montana book published at Virginia City in the same year by the proprietors of The Montana Post press, S. W. Tilton & Co.: The Vigilantes of Montana, or Popular Justice in the Rocky Mountains. Being a Correct and Impartial Narrative of the Chase, Trial, Capture and Execution of Henry Plummer's Road Agent Band, Together With Accounts of the Lives and Crimes of Many of the Robbers and Desperadoes, the Whole Being Interspersed With Sketches of Life in the Mining Camps of the "Far West;" Forming the Only Reliable Work on the Subject Ever Offered the Public. The author, Prof. Thos. J. Dimsdale, was an Englishman who served Virginia City as a teacher and as editor of the Post, where his work originally appeared in installments. This first edition in book form contains 228 pages of text. The Library date-stamped copy one in 1874. Copy two was deposited for copyright in 1882, the year that D. W. Tilton put out a second edition. Copy three bears the signature of Henry Gannett (1846-1914), geographer of the U.S. Geological Survey and at the time of his death president of the National Geographic Society. It contains a "War Service Library" bookplate and an "American Library Association Camp Library" borrower's card (unused). The Library of Congress received the copy from an unknown source in 1925.[139]