Oregon Digital Newspaper Program

The Oregon Digital Newspaper Program has always aimed to provide newspapers that represent the geographic diversity of our state. Historic Oregon Newspapers has titles from the biggest cities–Portland, Salem, Eugene–as well as small communities like Nyssa on the far eastern border, Lakeview in the rural south, and Spray in remote central Oregon.

Our map of titles provides a helpful visualization of titles from around Oregon.

We have recently added several new titles to Historic Oregon Newspapers that add even more coverage from the Oregon Coast and northeast corner of the state.

The Upper Left Edge (1992-2001) is a quirky weekly from Cannon Beach.*

The West (1891-1901) was published in Florence.**

Vernonia Eagle (1922-1974), from Columbia County, also includes special editions written by Vernonia High School students.***

Wallowa Chieftain (1884-1909) includes some of the earliest issues from this Union County newspaper.****

Want an overview of the Oregon Digital Newspaper Program and how to partner with us for digitization? Check out this short presentation or this overview of how the program works.

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*This project was sponsored by Watt Childress.

**This project was sponsored by the Siuslaw Pioneer Museum.

***This project was sponsored by Friends of the Vernonia Public Library.

****This project was sponsored by Wallowa History Center.

A span of years from the Halsey Enterprise (1917-1924 and 1927-1929) and Rural Enterprise (1924-1927) are now available in Historic Oregon Newspapers. Halsey is a rural town in Linn County south of Albany. It is also the hometown of Joanne Skelton, who generously sponsored this digitization project. Ms. Skelton is a dedicated local historian and genealogist who, after inquiring about online access to her hometown newspaper, decided to fund the project herself.

As soon as the papers went live online, she started research. Here is a message she shared:

I have been having fun reading these old papers. I was a little surprised at how many names I recognized, since it is a little before my time.

Already it has helped me with a family story. My Dad said that his grandparents had come from Kansas to Oregon for a visit in about 1917 because she [my grandmother] was going to a national DAR [Daughters of the American Revolution] convention in Portland. I doubted that it was completely correct because I had no record that she had belonged to the DAR. However, her obituary did say that she was a member of the WRC, Women’s Relief Corp, which is a women’s group of the GAR [Grand Army of the Republic], Civil War Veterans. I had previously done research to find if there was any type of national convention for them in Portland. I did find some articles in the Oregon Daily Journal from Portland in 1918, telling of a GAR and WRC convention that year August 19-24. But I had not been able to find any indication that my great-grandmother had come to Oregon then.  So today I put in the name Albertson for the Halsey paper and found an article on August 29, 1918 which stated: “J. N. Elliott and family, who expected to start for Kansas Tuesday of last week, were delayed a day the arrival of relatives from the east — Mrs. E’s parents, who are guests in the Albertson home.” Mrs. Elliott was my grandmother’s sister, this was my great-grandparents who were here in Oregon at the right time to attend the convention in Portland.

I am certainly looking forward to more discoveries.

The Halsey project is a good example of how even one person can spearhead a newspaper digitization project. Thanks, Joanne! We can do as little as one reel of microfilm at a time (this project was just three reels).

Want an overview of the Oregon Digital Newspaper Program and how to partner with us for digitization? Check out this short presentation or this overview of how the program works.

We have recently added several new newspaper titles from Central Point and Gold Hill to Historic Oregon Newspapers totaling over 15,000 pages. These projects were sponsored by the Central Point School District and spearheaded by George Kramer, who has championed digitization of many other newspapers from southern Oregon.

Central Point American (1939-1956)

Central Point Star (1929-1930)

Central Point Times (1964-1967)

Gold Hill News (1897-1942)

The Times [Gold Hill] (1952-1953)

Want an overview of the Oregon Digital Newspaper Program and how to partner with us for digitization? Check out this short presentation or this overview of how the program works.

The North Coast Times Eagle is a new addition to the Historic Oregon Newspapers database. Issues from this title cover 1979-2007. It was published in Wheeler, Astoria, and Cannon Beach, and has the spunky, DIY feel of a community newsletter with a global conscience. North Coast Times Eagle has numerous articles about the local fishing industry, the threat of nuclear arms, investigations into violence against women, editorials about racism at home and abroad, as well as poetry, local art, and cartoons.

The Oregon State Library has been a long-standing supporter of the Oregon Digital Newspaper Program through its LSTA grant funding to Oregon libraries to fund newspaper digitization. Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) funding is allocated from the federal government to states to support libraries and other cultural heritage institutions. In 2022-2023, we were glad to partner with seven organizations with LSTA grants to digitize newspapers from around the state:

• Cottage Grove Sentinel (1924-1929), sponsored by the Cottage Grove Museum
• Gresham Outlook (1911-1928), sponsored by the Multnomah County Library
• Hermiston Herald (1915-1945), sponsored by the Hermiston Public Library
• Hood River Glacier (1924-1928), sponsored by the Hood River Public Library
• Illinois Valley News (1937-1952), sponsored by the Josephine Community Library District
• Opportunity News (1965-1968), sponsored by Oregon Historical Society
• Toveri (1916-1921), sponsored by the Astoria Public Library

Issues from 2015-2016 of the Baker County Record-Courier newspapers are now available in Historic Oregon Newspapers. These are relatively recent issues compared to the the myriad historical newspapers we provide in the database, but it’s a great example of how ODNP digitization projects can focus on whatever content someone wants to make available from any time period. In this case, the director of the Baker County Library, Perry Stokes, had 77 print issues of the Record-Courier in his library, and he wanted to make sure they could be accessible and preserved for future research. He sent the issues to us in Eugene, where we digitized and processed them for access in Historic Oregon Newspapers.