Black Rock Press was founded by Kenneth Carpenter in 1965. It is named after a landmark in the Black Rock Desert in northern Nevada that guided emigrants on the Applegate Trail. The Press is dedicated to the practice and teaching of the arts and crafts associated with the creation of finely printed books. It has become a living museum of traditional printing technology, housing cabinets filled with metal type, and a number of historically significant printing presses. Its centerpiece, a gilded 1837 super-royal Columbian iron handpress, is one of the finest examples of a nineteenth-century iron handpress to be found anywhere in the country.