Mint Julep... [and] determined to start a paper" of their own. The first issue of this project, The Californian, was released in May 1864. Webb's irreverent tone and burlesques of California life and Californians, however, were not successful and in 1866 he left The Californian and returned to the East Coast.

When his friend Mark Twain had difficulty finding a publisher for his first collection of sketches,