Oregon Digital Newspaper Program Menu

Until recently, Historic Oregon Newspapers had at least one newspaper from every one of Oregon’s 36 counties — except for Sherman County. But now, thanks to the fundraising efforts of our partner Sherman County Historical Museum, several newspapers from this area of north-central Oregon are now available. In October 2025 we added over 15,000 pages from the following titles:

• Sherman County Observer (1897-1931)
• Sherman County Journal (1931-1963)
• Moro Observer (1896-1897)
• Moro Leader (1898-1900)
• Moro Bulletin (1902)
• The People’s Republic (1898-1899)
• The Wasco News (1897-1908)

You can search across all of these titles simultaneously by going to Historic Oregon Newspapers > Advanced Search > Limit By > County > Sherman.

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Interested in digitizing newspapers? Check out our overview of how it works, or contact us.

The Oregon News Herald is a recent addition to the current newspapers preservation program in ODNP. Formerly North Douglas Herald, the Oregon News Herald is a free newspaper published monthly in Drain, Oregon. It provides local news, events, and information with a special focus on communities in north Douglas County and south Lane County. Editor and publisher Rusty Savage started the newspaper because he saw a need for local news coverage in the area that wasn’t being met by other media organizations.

Oregon News Herald is a great example of several new publications (here, here, here, and here) that have appeared in the last few years in Oregon to fill the gaps left by the closure or contraction of many long-time local newspapers.

We’re grateful to the publisher for joining our preservation program to ensure that this important source of local news is accessible for research into the future.

You can find print issues of Oregon News Herald at 80 locations in the region, and through their website. Issues are also available in Historic Oregon Newspapers:

• North Douglas Herald (2023-2025)
• Oregon News Herald (2025- )

We would love to add more current titles to our preservation program! Historic Oregon Newspapers doesn’t replace newspapers’ websites or distribution models, but we do provide a secure and stable preservation system to ensure that current digital newspapers are available into the future for research and education, just like our historical newspapers. The program is free for publishers to participate, but they must opt-in and sign a license permission form that allows ODNP to preserve and make the content available online. ODNP will never ingest content from current newspapers without prior permission from the publisher.

 

A guest post by Justin Spence, ODNP Project Manager and coordinator of the tribal publications project

We recently posted about ODNP’s current project to digitize Native American tribal newspapers. Under the same initiative, we are also digitizing newspapers and other serialized publications from other eras that pertain directly to the history of Native American people in Oregon. Key among these are materials produced at the institution known today as Chemawa Indian School (and by other names earlier in its history), both in its current location in Salem and its earliest instantiation as the Forest Grove Indian School in Forest Grove. (We will refer to these collectively simply as “Chemawa” for simplicity.) 

Chemawa is part of the system of federally run residential schools established in the United States whose primary mission for many decades was to remove Native American children from their families, often hundreds or even thousands of miles away, and assimilate them to a dominant American society. The history of the residential schools is complex, with students having quite varied experiences depending on circumstances such as which school they attended and when, the school staff and administrators, prevailing attitudes towards discipline and the value of Native American knowledge systems, etc. But collectively these institutions are widely considered to have negatively impacted many individuals who went through them, who suffered various forms of physical, sexual, and psychological abuse, with lasting effects on the communities they came from in the present day.  

Currently, there are major efforts to document and better understand the experiences of students who attended the federal residential schools, including at the national level via the Department of the Interior’s Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative (culminating with an official apology issued in October 2024) and nonprofits such as the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition, alongside numerous local, community-led initiatives. One important component of this broad effort is providing access to archival documents generated by the bureaucratic apparatus created to support systems of coercive assimilation that the residential schools too often imposed. The Chemawa school newspaper is one such set of documents and is especially important because it provides glimpses at regular intervals of student life at Chemawa. In some years, especially by the mid-20th century, the newspaper was produced with significant input from the student body itself, voices that are rarely heard so directly in other kinds of historical documents (e.g., reports generated by school administrators). The newspaper ran as The Indian Citizen when the school was still located at Forest Grove, then was published as the Weekly Chemawa American and Chemawa American (with earlier and later instantiations under that title) after it relocated to its present-day location in Salem in the late 1880s. 

The ODNP digitization effort was initiated by some of the federally recognized tribes of Oregon and has received a strong endorsement from the Affiliated Tribes of Northwest Indians (resolution #2023-04, “Endorsement for the Addition of Chemawa Indian School’s Historic Newspapers to the Oregon Historical Newspaper Program Repository”). Drawing materals provided by over a dozen archival repositories, ODNP has nearly finished digitizing issues spanning more than a century (1880s to 1980s). We are now turning our attention to digitizing yearbooks published at Chemawa each spring starting in the 1920s. Although these are not newspapers, they are serials published annually and can be incorporated into the Historic Oregon Newspapers website. We are also exploring alternative platforms that might be able to host the yearbooks once digitization is complete, such as Oregon Digital, Northwest Digital Heritage, and the Plateau Peoples’ Portal (the last of these already hosts some issues of the Chemawa yearbook). 

ODNP would like to thank the partner institutions who generously provided access to materials in their collections, in many cases digitizing materials free of charge. Without their contributions, we would not have been able to provide the same level of access to these important historical documents. 

• Chachalu Museum and Cultural Center, Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde 
• The Huntington Library 
• Library of Congress 
• Oregon Historical Society 
• Pacific University Libraries 
• Princeton University Library Special Collections 
• State Library of Oregon 
• University of Oregon Special Collections and University Archive 
• University of Washington Libraries Special Collections 
• Washington State University, Terrell Library 
• Whitman College and Northwest Archives, Penrose Library 
• Willamette University Libraries 
• Wisconsin Historical Society 
• Yale University, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library 

A guest post by Justin Spence, ODNP Project Manager and coordinator of the tribal publications project

One ongoing ODNP project, funded by the State Library of Oregon via a Library Services and Technology Act grant, is focused on digitizing historical and current newspapers related to Native American tribes of Oregon. This includes three newspapers published by tribes themselves, which have been published continuously since the 1970s: Smoke Signals (Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde), Siletz News (Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians), and Spilyay Tymoo ‘Coyote News’ (Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs). Under partnerships established with these tribes, ODNP has nearly finished processing the complete runs of these three titles, and we add new issues on an ongoing basis soon after they are published, ensuring that they will be preserved in perpetuity in UO Libraries’ digital archives. We’ve also added Siletz News II, an independent newspaper published by a Siletz tribal member for a few years in the late 1980s and early 1990s. 

All of these publications offer news about events occurring on their respective reservations and surrounding regions that is rarely covered in other newspapers, as well as many articles featuring information about Indian Country more broadly nationwide. Importantly, these tribal newspapers are written and published from the perspectives of members of the tribal communities themselves. This reflects a major shift in emphasis away from writing about Native American people towards writing by and for Native American people – helping ensure that Pacific Northwest journalism represents a much broader range of views on the significance of current and historical events affecting Native communities than was found before these newspapers were founded.  

While ODNP is proud to offer a permanent archival home and ongoing public access for these newspapers, readers can access recent issues on the newspapers’ own websites, where they will also find information about various aspects of the tribes’ governance, current projects, events, and other activities. Here are links to the websites for Smoke Signals, Siletz News, and Spilyay Tymoo. And although they are not currently participating in ODNP, you might also be interested in checking out the Confederated Umatilla Journal (Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation), Voice of CTCLUSI (Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw Indians), Klamath Tribes News (Klamath Tribes) and Tu’-kwa Hone, the newsletter of the Burns Paiute Tribe. The Coquille Tribe and Cow Creek Band of Umqua Tribe of Indians also feature sections with current news on their official websites. 

Street Roots is a non-profit weekly newspaper published in Portland since 1999. Issues are sold by people experiencing homelessness and poverty, and a majority of the proceeds go to the vendors. The newspaper provides local news and investigative reporting focused on social and environmental justice issues, as well as poetry and other creative writing written by vendors.

The Oregon Digital Newspaper Program recently completed a digitization project of ten years’ worth of Street Roots issues (2009-2019), thanks to an anonymous donor. We’re pleased to add this title to Historic Oregon Newspapers and to ensure it is preserved for research into the future. Street Roots provides news and opinion that often isn’t found in mainstream news outlets, and it can widen our perspective on what the news is and, eventually, what our history is. Similar to newspapers published by and for a particular audience, Street Roots adds to the diversity of resources in Historic Oregon Newspapers that tell the complex stories of Oregon.

We recently added a phase 2 project to digitize more back issues of Street Roots (1999-2008) and its predecessor Burnside Cadillac (1995-1998). These issues will become available in Historic Oregon Newspapers in early 2027.

The Oregon Digital Newspaper Program just added a boatload of new issues from the Sandy Post, completing a large digitization project (nearly 40,000 pages!) sponsored by an intrepid group of folks affiliated with the Sandy Historical Society and Friends of the Sandy Public Library in Sandy, Oregon. This project includes a short run of Sandy News (1915-1917) and a substantial portion of Sandy Post (1938-1982). Thirty-one reels of microfilm in a single project is usually more than we can handle in one go, but we’re glad to add Sandy to the Historic Oregon Newspapers map.

Access this new content directly here:

• Sandy News: https://oregonnews.uoregon.edu/lccn/2024240280/
• Sandy Post: https://oregonnews.uoregon.edu/lccn/2024240281/ 

Sharp-eyed readers may notice that the Sandy Post issues fall after the date of public domain, which currently applies to works published 1929 and before. Isn’t this newspaper protected by copyright? ODNP staff conducted copyright research on this title to determine that it had never been registered for copyright and issues published into the 1980s do not have a copyright notice printed on them (the © symbol). According to these criteria, ODNP can legally digitize and host the issues through March 1989 without obtaining permission from the publisher to do so. For content that is protected by copyright, ODNP will always seek permission from the rights holder and will never digitize and host content without obtaining prior permission.

Learn more about copyright, permissions, and reuse of content in Historic Oregon Newspapers.

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Interested in digitizing newspapers? Check out our overview of how it works, or contact us.

The Oregon Digital Newspaper Program digitizes newspapers from all over the state, as illustrated by a clutch of titles recently added to Historic Oregon Newspapers.

From southern Oregon, this project was sponsored by Ashland School District #5:

• Ashland Daily Tidings, 1921-1927
• Southern Oregon Miner, 1944-1952

From the lower Willamette Valley, this project was sponsored by the Springfield Museum and Springfield Public Library with funding from the City of Springfield:

• The Springfield News, 1919-1947
• Lane County News, 1914-1916

From Yamhill County in the upper Willamette Valley, this project was sponsored by the City of Dayton with funding from the Oregon Heritage Commission:

• Dayton Tribune, 1912-1928
• Dayton Herald, 1893-1906

From the Tualatin Valley west of Portland, this project was sponsored by the Hillsboro Historical Society:

• Hillsboro Argus, 1934-1949

From the northern Oregon Coast Range mountains, this project was sponsored by the City of Vernonia:

• The Independent (Vernonia), 1986-2006

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Interested in digitizing newspapers? Check out our overview of how it works, or contact us.

The Oregon Digital Newspaper Program recently completed work on several newspapers that published for specific audiences. Unlike newspapers for a city or town which provide news, opinion, and advertisements for a general audience, these titles provided specialized news for communities that might not get their needs met with general newspapers. Oregon has many newspapers that fall into this category, with publications for ethnic communities, LGBTQ folks, religious groups, migrant farmworkers, and high schools, to name just a few.

Portland Labor Press began publishing in 1900 by a consortium of trade unions, and is still in print today as Northwest Labor Press. This newspaper provides coverage of labor movements and issues affecting working people in the Pacific Northwest, as well as national and global news.

Northwest Labor Press sponsored digitization of historic issues from 1900-1916, for a total of 4,664 pages.

• Portland Labor Press (1900-1915)
• Oregon Labor Press (1915-1916)

The Portland Observer is an African American newspaper published in Portland since 1970. A University of Oregon law professor wrote a grant to sponsor digitization of the complete run of this remarkable publication, a total of 2,551 issues. The Portland Observer provided news that was often ignored by the Oregonian and other mainstream newspapers, including stories about housing, education, police brutality, access to jobs, and displacement and gentrification within African American neighborhoods. The Portland Observer also provided a crucial means of connecting and celebrating the African American community in Portland with stories about families, church activities, community groups, activism, music and dance events, and ads for Black-owned businesses.

• The Portland Observer (1970-2022; more recent issues are forthcoming)

The Torch of Reason was a weekly newspaper published by Liberal University in Silverton. Liberal University was established in the 1890s as a secular university that aimed to educate students in “the sciences, such as economics, politics, ethics, art and the religious meaning of science and humanity, in a word, the higher and final motives and purposes of life.” The Torch of Reason embraced “freethinking,” science, and reason as a stance against religious conservatism, which dominated American society at the time, according to Silverton historian Gus Frederick, who sponsored the digitization project through the Silverton Country Historical Society and a successful community kickstarter campaign.

• Torch of Reason (1896-1903)

The Oregon Digital Newspaper Program recently completed three digitization projects for newspapers representing the Oregon coastal communities of Port Orford, Brookings and Florence.

The Port Orford project was sponsored by Cape Blanco Heritage Society, which received grant funding through Oregon Parks and Recreation Department. We digitized nine reels of microfilm of the following newspapers for a total of 7,973 pages.

• Port Orford Tribune (1920-1925)
• Port Orford Post (1880-1882)
• Port Orford Post (1937-1940)
• Port Orford News (1926-1933)
• Port Orford News (1961-1976)

The Brookings project was sponsored by the Chetco Community Public Library, which received funding through a $5,000 Oregon Heritage Commission grant. We digitized five reels of microfilm of Brookings-Harbor Pilot from 1946-1957 for a total of 598 issues and 6,682 pages. Access this title directly here.

The Florence project was sponsored by the Siuslaw Pioneer Museum. We digitized one microfilm reel of the Siuslaw Pilot newspaper covering 1915-1916, for a total of 927 pages. This project is a great example that no project is too small for ODNP!

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Interested in digitizing newspapers? Check out our overview of how it works, or contact us.

The Oregon Digital Newspaper Program has collaborated with Newspapers.com (a subsidiary of Ancestry.com) and publisher E.O. Media to digitize even more historic Oregon newspapers. Newspapers.com borrowed negative master microfilm reels from UO Libraries to digitize multiple newspaper titles at no cost to ODNP. After an embargo period, ODNP can add the digitized issues to Historic Oregon Newspapers.

In 2020, ODNP staff started adding digitized issues from the first project, and we are continuing to work on adding the rest of the Phase 1 files. In 2027, we will be able to add files from the second project.

In the meantime, the UO Libraries provides access to all of these titles and issues through a subscription to Newspapers.com. UO students, staff, and faculty can access the database online, and the public can access it on public library computers in any UO campus library. Subscribers to Ancestry.com and/or the Oregon newspapers portion of Newspapers.com can now access of this new content.

Phase 1 Titles (2015 project)

Albany, Oregon 

• Morning Daily Herald, 1888-1891 
• Albany Daily Democrat, 1889-1922 
• Daily Evening Albany Democrat, 1888-1889
• Albany Democrat, 1900-1910; 1922-1925 
• Albany Evening Herald, 1910-1925 
• Albany Evening Herald and Albany Democrat, 1925 
• Albany Democrat-Herald, 1925-1963 

Bend, Oregon 

• Bend Bulletin (Daily), 1918-1963 
• Bulletin, 1963 

Corvallis, Oregon 

• Corvallis Gazette-Times, 1910-1963 

Eugene, Oregon 

• Daily Eugene Guard, 1891-1906 
• Eugene Daily Guard, 1906-1926 
• Eugene Guard, 1926-1930 
• Eugene Morning Register, 1895-1906 
• Morning Register, 1906-1929 
• Eugene Register, 1929-1930 
• Eugene Register-Guard, 1930-1963 

Klamath Falls 

• Klamath News, 1923-1942 
• Evening Herald, 1923-1942 
• Herald and News, 1942-1963 

LaGrande, Oregon 

• Morning Observer, 1897-1904
• Evening Observer, 1912-1959 
• Observer, 1930-1933; 1959-1963 

Medford, Oregon 

• Medford Mail, 1892-1909 
• Medford Mail Tribune (Daily), 1906-1909; 1916-1963 

Portland, Oregon 

• Oregon Daily Journal, 1902-1963 

Roseburg, Oregon 

• Review (Daily), 1901-1920 
• Evening News, 1909-1920 
• News-Review, 1920-1963 

Salem, Oregon 

• Oregon Statesman, 1851-1963 
• Capital Journal, 1923-1963 

Phase 2 Titles (2024 project)

Astoria, Oregon

• Astoria Evening Budget, 1893-1930
• Astoria Weekly Budget, 1904-1915
• The Daily Astorian, 1876-2014
• Weekly Astorian, 1949-1965

Baker City, Oregon

• Baker City Herald, 1890-2014
• Bedrock Democrat, 1905-1874
• Evening Baker Herald, 1918-1929
• Weekly Bedrock Democrat, 1921-1928

Bend, Oregon

• The Bend Bulletin, 1903-1931
• The Bulletin, 1916-2014
• Central Oregon Press, 1921-1926

Enterprise, Oregon

• Wallowa County Chieftain, 1884-2014
• Wallowa County Reporter, 1917-1921

Hermiston, Oregon

• Hermiston Herald, 1945-2014

John Day, Oregon

• Blue Mountain Eagle, 1900-2014
• Grant County News, 1897-1908

La Grande, Oregon

• La Grande Morning Star, 1907-1911
• La Grande Weekly Observer, 1897-1911
• The Observer, 1897-2014
• The Observer-Star, 1909-1924

Pendleton, Oregon

• E O: East Oregonian, 1882-1910
• East Oregonian, 1888-2014

Redmond, Oregon

• The Redmond Spokesman, 1914-2014

Salem, Oregon

• Capital Press (California ed.), 1992-2007
• Capital Press (Eastern Oregon ed.), 1975-2014
• Capital Press (Idaho ed.), 1991-2003
• Capital Press (Western Oregon ed.), 1928-2014

Seaside, Oregon

• Seaside Signal, 1964-2014