Historic newspaper content from the Hood River News (1909-1913), the Maupin Times (1914-1930), and previously missing content from The Dalles Weekly Chronicle is now available for searching and browsing online at Historic Oregon Newspapers, thanks to a partnership with the Hood River County Library District, with funding from Google’s The Dalles Data Center and the Hood River Cultural Trust.

Located on the Oregon side of the Columbia River Gorge among the Cascade Mountains, the community of Hood River was incorporated in 1895 as part of Wasco County, but became the county seat of the newly established Hood River County in 1908. At the confluence of the waters descending from Mount Hood meeting the Columbia River, the town is known for shipping, agriculture, brewing, and outdoor recreation.

The Maupin Times, published from 1914-1930 in Maupin, Oregon, on the Deschutes River in Wasco County, describes the rural happenings of the agricultural community east of Mount Hood, 40 miles from the Columbia River. Historic Oregon Newspapers online offers issues of the paper’s full run from 1914-1930.

The Hood River News began publishing in 1909, and continues to this day. In the 1939, the newspaper won the National Editorial Association trophy for best editorial page. Newly digitized issues of historic content from the News cover 1909-1913. Vivid full-page advertisement spreads accentuate the bold graphic style at the heart of this paper, not to mention the local coverage of the Hood River community!

Also unique to Historic Oregon Newspapers online is previously missing issues of The Dalles Weekly Chronicle.  The Dalles is county seat of Wasco County, home to a major hydro-electric dam and locks and connection to central Oregon. It represented the end of the river for those settling the Oregon Trail, where they might head toward Portland on the Barlow Road.  In 1890, the town was a rail and boat hub, and the Weekly Chronicle was founded on issues of flooding and water access for the area.  Although portions of this title have been available on the site for a few years, we have now filled in gaps in the content for 1893, July-Dec. of 1894, 1899, and 1900, so all content from Dec. 1890-1900 is now available.

Enjoy all the new papers made available through the historic preservation efforts of these remarkable partnerships, and find more history at Historic Oregon Newspapers!

Thanks to the funding and partnership of the Beaverton Library Foundation and the Beaverton Historical Society, the Beaverton Owl and Beaverton Times are now available on Historic Oregon Newspapers online.

Quick history of Beaverton

Beaverton is a community to the west of Portland, Oregon. Its name comes from beaver dams that could be found in the formerly marshy country; in fact, the area had been named Chakeipi, place of the beaver, before settlers arrived. The town was incorporated in 1893 with a population around 400. Today, Beaverton has around 93,542 people.

Historic Papers in Beaverton

The Beaverton Owl and the Beaverton Times began as the Beaverton Reporter in 1909, before being bought by Earl E. Fisher and changed to the Owl.

We have issues of The Beaverton Owl from July 20 1912 to May 16, 1914.  You can easily access these issues in the Historic Newspapers Calendar View. Additionally, you can easily search the title for terms.

Like the Report before it, the Owl was succeeded by The Beaverton Times in 1914 after being purchased by Hicks & Davis.

Historic Oregon Newspapers online now has weekly coverage of The Beaverton Times from August 19, 1915 – June 9, 1922.  Browse the issue calendar, or search the paper.

Find even more interesting stories from Beaverton and all around the state at Historic Oregon Newspapers online.

Thanks to a partnership with the Aurora Colony Historical Society and Museum of Aurora, Oregon, issues from May-December 1908 of the town’s historic newspaper, The Aurora Borealis, are now available for keyword searching and browsing at Historic Oregon Newspapers online!

Founded as a Christian communal colony in the 1850s, Aurora was populated by several hundred members of the Bethel Colony in Missouri, mostly German and Swiss immigrants, led by founder Wilhelm Keil across the Oregon Trail. Despite hardships in the new frontier, Aurora colonists thrived until Keil’s death in 1877 and the subsequent dissolution of the colony, which is now incorporated as the City of Aurora.

Content from The Aurora Borealis can be browsed by issue date via the website’s calendar view, and keyword searches of the title can be performed on the Search page by selecting “The Aurora Borealis” on the “Select Newspaper(s)” list. The paper covered news at all levels, including world, national, state, and of course local:

Explore the many articles, advertisements, and other interesting tidbits that The Aurora Borealis has to offer, and discover Oregon’s history at Historic Oregon Newspapers online.

Several historic newspaper titles from Hillsboro, county seat of Washington County, Oregon, are now available for keyword searching and browsing online at Historic Oregon Newspapers, thanks to a partnership with the Hillsboro Public Library! The following titles can be found listed in alphabetical order on the Historic Oregon Newspapers Titles page, and they can be selected for title-specific keyword searching on the Search page:

• Washington Independent, Oct. 30, 1874-Jan. 25, 1877

• Washington County Independent, Jan. 17, 1881

• The Independent (Hillsboro), Sept. 20. 1882-Jan. 2, 1890

• Hillsboro Independent, Aug. 4, 1893-June 12, 1908

• The Argus (Hillsboro), July 26, 1894-Aug. 8, 1895

• The Hillsboro Argus, Aug. 15, 1895-Dec. 28, 1922

Here are just a few clippings from these titles that we found to be interesting, but there are countless more headlines, articles, advertisements, images, and other curiosities just waiting to be discovered in these Hillsboro newspapers!

The Oregon Digital Newspaper Program (ODNP) is pleased to announce the addition of the Klamath Tribune to the Historic Oregon Newspapers online keyword-searchable database! Published in Chiloquin, Oregon from 1956-1961 by the Klamath Information and Education Program (a facet of the Oregon State Department of Education), this is the first newspaper solely covering Tribal issues that we have digitized and added to the website, in partnership with the Klamath Tribes and a generous University of Oregon Libraries donor.

The Klamath Tribune was published in the wake of the U.S. Congress’ 1954 decision to terminate federal recognition of the Klamath Tribes, which include the Klamath, Modoc, and Yahooskin Band of Paiute Indians. The decision was controversial, given that an official report from the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) stated that the Klamath Tribes did not meet the criteria for termination, and there was major opposition from Tribal members. The Klamath Termination Act, otherwise known as Public Law 587, was framed in the context of helping the Tribes, but the effects of termination were overwhelmingly negative. (More information can be found online at The Klamath Tribes’ website.)

The Klamath Information and Education Program was created to help Tribal members assimilate into Anglo-American culture. Volume 1, Issue 1 of the Klamath Tribune appeared in November of 1956 as a means of communication with Tribal members in preparation for termination and to inform them of educational opportunities available to them under Section 26 of the termination law, which stated that:

The Klamath Tribune included:

Tribal news, with a focus on education-related news items and individual achievements:

“Q&A” sections about the Termination law (otherwise known as “Public Law 587”):

Recommendations for agriculture, ranching, and home-keeping practices:

Information on water rights, and other political, economic, and environmental issues:

Although Tribal perspectives were included, the paper was primarily dedicated to persuading Tribal members to actively learn and participate in the dominant Anglo-American culture and way of doing things:

The last issue of the Tribune was published in July of 1961. By 1986, the Klamath Tribes were successful in restoring their federally recognized tribal status through the Klamath Restoration Act. The addition of the Klamath Tribune to the Historic Oregon Newspapers database is a crucial step towards representing the full range of Oregon’s history and cultural heritage in our online newspaper collection. Go check it out, explore, and see for yourself! You never know what you might find in the newspaper pages of the past.

Sources:

Robbins, William G. “Subtopic : People, Politics, and the Environment Since 1945: Termination.” The Oregon History Project. Oregon Historical Society. Web. Accessed April 30, 2014. <http://www.ohs.org/education/oregonhistory/narratives/subtopic.cfm?subtopic_ID=171>

The Klamath Tribes. “History.” The Klamath Tribes. Web. Accessed April 30, 2014. <http://www.klamathtribes.org/history.html>

The Klamath Tribes. “Termination.” The Klamath Tribes. Web. Accessed April 30, 2014. <http://www.klamathtribes.org/background/termination.html>

Here at the ODNP, we’re always thrilled to hear about or see how Oregon’s historic newspapers are being used. The weekend of March 14, 2014 marked one of these instances right here in our hometown of Eugene, where a Lane County Historical Museum exhibit titled, “Women of the Gold Rush West” debuted to hundreds of community members in the lobby of the Hult Center, in conjunction with the Eugene Opera’s performance of Puccini’s “The Girl of the Golden West.”

The exhibit, which included women’s clothing from the 1850s, an antique saloon sign, a gold dust bag, and other items that would typically have been found in a Gold Rush Era saloon, was created and coordinated by Dorothy Bayern, a graduate student in the University of Oregon’s Folklore program, as part of her terminal project for her Master’s degree.

Dorothy’s research focuses on “clothing traditions, and in particular how clothing in museum settings helps people connect to other cultures and historical periods,” so fittingly, the exhibit included an interactive “dress up” station, where people could don bonnets, cowboy hats, and other period clothing items and props, and then have their picture taken in front of a country backdrop. Of course, our favorite part of the display was a replica of the November 4, 1848 issue of the Oregon Free Press, printed from our Historic Oregon Newspapers website! The Oregon Free Press was published in Oregon City from April to November of 1848, at which point the paper was forced to suspend due to the outflow of subscribers to the gold mines of California. (Read more about the history of the Free Press here.)

Nestled next to a Wells Fargo driver’s cap from the 1850s, the newspaper was a great fit for the exhibit! Dorothy explains, “Oregon and California were both on the American frontier in the 1850s. Many Americans left Oregon for the famous California Gold Rush, but Oregon had gold rushes too, which is why Lane County Historical Museum has artifacts like the gold dust bag on display, and mining equipment currently on display at the museum. This newspaper was the perfect final touch to connect the opera’s depiction of gold rush life to local history in Oregon.”

This excellent exhibit is now available for viewing at the Lane County Historical Museum through the end of March, so go check it out if you can! Many thanks to Dorothy Bayern and the Lane County Historical Museum for including this unique Oregon newspaper in the exhibit! Very well done!

The History page of Historic Oregon Newspapers online provides essays for each title in the collection describing the unique history, content and context in which each newspaper was produced. Several new essays, written by our ODNP Essayist and graduate student in the University of Oregon’s Historic Preservation program, Emily Vance, have just been added to the site, covering many of the Oregon City titles and others that have recently been added to the database. While researching the history of the Oregon City Courier, Emily began to notice an eerie trend amongst the paper’s many editors over time. In what seems to be the beginning of an “X-Files” of sorts for Oregon’s historic newspapers, Emily shares the secrets that she uncovered in her debut blog post, “The Curse of the Courier!”

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The Oregon City Courier has a long and intriguing history in the state.  We have the advantage of being able to look back at one of the very first issues in 1883 and follow the paper’s transformation over time, which was suspicious to say the least.  During its 67 years in print, the Courier changed names and editors perhaps a little too frequently.  From 1902 to 1919, when the turnover rate for the Courier was at its peak, the paper was replacing its editor about every two years.  Not long after leaving the paper, several of the Courier’s editors would fall victim to mysterious illnesses or bizarre accidents.  Suicide, social scandals and even exploding coffee pots seemed to be drawn to editors-past.  Perhaps it was being passed around so much, the ever-changing names and owners, that left the Courier feeling abandoned, unwanted and, ultimately, vengeful.  Perhaps it was the ghost of President William McKinley who came back to haunt the men who so harshly criticized him, hoping that maybe next time they’ll put the assassination of a president on the front page and not on page six, crammed between advertisements for Castoria Digestive Syrup and fur coats:

What was lurking in the pages of the Courier?  What could explain the mysterious circumstances surrounding the lives and deaths of the Courier’s editors in the early 1900s?

Our story begins on April 15, 1904 when John H. Westover, after only two years at the helm of the Oregon City Courier, innocently sold the paper to Shirley Buck and Professor Henry L. McCann.  Westover had only just moved to Oregon and after resigning his post, immediately left the state for reasons unknown.  McCann and Buck remained for a very short time as well, and both left the paper in 1906.  In 1910, only a handful of years after leaving the Courier, McCann was found dead “by the side of a deserted cabin in a lonely canyon” a few miles outside of Condon, a gunshot blow to his head.  He had committed suicide after scandalous accusations arose while he was principal at Gilliam County High School, a post he had taken after leaving the Courier.  Rumors of McCann being “mentally unbalanced” surrounded his death, but no such charges of mental deficiency surfaced before his work at the Courier.

After McCann and Buck, editorship passed to Edward Brodie and A. E. Frost.  After hitting the two year mark, they, too, turned the paper over to the next unsuspecting editor, William A. Shewman, who took charge in 1908.  Shewman would remain at the Courier for three years – a year longer than most – which may have been his undoing.  Shewman left in 1911, at which point his health declined sharply.  Shewman would never recover after working at the Courier and passed away in 1913 after battling a long and serious illness.

M. J. Brown replaced Shewman in 1911. Instead of resigning his post at the two year mark, the Courier had something else in store for Brown.  In 1913, Brown was indicted for criminal libel due to matters printed in the June 27th issue of the Courier.  The scandal involved Brown publishing allegations that several county officials rebated their own taxes.  Despite the rather unexciting criminal delinquency, Brown remained at the helm of the Courier until February 18, 1915, at which point he sold the paper – two years after his indictment.  His four years as editor is truly a remarkable feat but one which must have surely left him mad, since he immediately left town after selling the paper, never to be seen again.  Well, at least for several years.  More reliable sources indicate that he actually just moved to Corvallis to start a poultry farm.

E. R. Brown, unrelated to M. J. Brown, purchased the paper in 1915 but, unsurprisingly, wouldn’t last a year in charge, and Cecil W. Robey was the editor and business manager in 1916.  By 1919 when the Courier was printing as the Banner-Courier, Fred J. Tooze and Halbert E. Hoss replaced Robey as editor.  Robey, however, wouldn’t get off that easy as the Courier was merely biding its time.  The year after leaving the Courier, Robey would fall victim to an “exploding coffee pot” while camping in Molalla country; a bewildering event.  The “air tight coffee pot filled with boiling coffee, and the force of the explosion caused the pot to fly into the air, the cover striking Robey in the face, while the hot coffee poured over his face and clothing.”  Robey, who was thrown “head over heels,” very nearly lost his sight  and suffered bad burns on his face and body.

In 1924 Edward A. Koen purchased the paper.  E. A. Koen, along with his son Edward P. Koen, would edit and publish the newspaper for the next 26 years.  The name and editor wouldn’t change for decades.  This consistency seems to have appeased the Courier since, it would seem, no ill befell the Koens for decades.  It appears the Curse of the Courier is broken… for now.

–Written by Emily Vance

In partnership with the Morrow County Museum in Heppner, Oregon, several early newspapers from Heppner are now available for keyword searching and browsing online at Historic Oregon Newspapers!

• Heppner Weekly Gazette: June 22, 1883-July 31, 1890
• The Weekly Heppner Gazette: Nov. 6, 1890-Feb. 18, 1892
• Heppner Gazette: March 1, 1892-Feb. 28, 1901
• Heppner Times: Nov. 26, 1903-Dec. 8, 1904
• Heppner Herald: May 7, 1914-Dec. 26, 1922

Incorporated on Feb. 9, 1887, the town of Heppner has seen many years’ worth of historical events in the Northeastern region of Oregon. In 1885, Morrow County was created, carved from the already existing Umatilla County. In 1888, Heppner welcomed it’s first railroad line, which was a spur from the Columbia River. As more railroads and roads were added over the years, Heppner became a regional trade center. You can follow the community’s enthusiasm and the development of the railroad through these historic newspapers with a  search for “railroad,” limited to Heppner titles with results listed in date order. We found the following entries, but there are over 2,000 pages of Heppner newspapers that mention railroads, so you won’t be bored!

In June of 1888, there was much anticipation for the coming railroad as a contributor to economic boom:

By late November of 1888, the railroad was complete, a cause for celebration:

As the county seat, Heppner was and still is the home of the Morrow County Courthouse. Constructed in 1903, it is one of the oldest continually used courthouses in Oregon, not to mention a fabulous example of American Renaissance architecture. That same year, a devastating flood crashed through the town killing hundreds of community members and destroying hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of property. Gruesome reports of victims and body parts being found months after the event can be seen in the Heppner Times, from which digitized issues are available from late 1903 to late 1904:

The very same page contains a surprising advertisement for, well, see for yourself:

Another flood struck again in 1918, along with two fires that destroyed many buildings and homes in the community. The Heppner Herald was one of the many businesses affected by the fire of June, 1918, which apparently started in or near the Palace Hotel and spread by wind, destroying four and a half city blocks. Publisher S.A. Pattison gives his perspective in the July 5, 1918 issue of the paper, which came out a day late due to the fire:

The Heppner Hotel, built in 1920, was part of the town’s rebuilding after the several disasters, and it is one of the historic buildings still standing in Heppner today:

These clippings are just a few examples of the content that can be found in Heppner’s historic newspapers. Search or browse these titles and see what other kinds of interesting things you can find!

The International Federation of Library Associations’ (IFLA) Newspaper group recently convened in Salt Lake City for a two-day conference focused on “Spreading the News.” Representatives from across the United States, as well as from other countries such as Finland, the United Kingdom, Nigeria, Japan, and Vietnam, presented and shared their processes, expertise, and experiences working with newspapers in a library setting:

History of Newspapers

• Newspapers first appeared available to the public in England around 1620, covering mostly foreign news items. Because each sheet of paper was taxed, the font on these early papers was extremely small, so as to include as much content as possible on each page. The oldest surviving newspaper is the London Gazette, dating back to 1665.
• In the early 1700s, vital records and news of the local common people began appearing in newspapers, and this practice continued into the 1800s. The Boston News-Letter was the first official newspaper published in the United States, appearing in 1704.
• As we have blogged about before, the University of Illinois’ History, Philosophy and Newspaper Library (HPNL) has created several short videos focusing on the history of newspapers in the United States before the Civil War. The newest videos, each roughly 20 minutes long, are entitled:  “Introduction to American Newspapers, 1800-1860,” “American Newspapers, 1800-1860: City Papers,” and “American Newspapers, 1800-1860: Country Papers.” These and other informational videos are available online through the library’s guide on Antebellum American Newspapers or via YouTube.

Genealogy and Newspapers

Genealogy is one of the fastest growing hobbies in North America, and genealogists are one of the largest groups of newspaper researchers – birth, death, and marriage notices published in newspapers often provide a starting point for the information that genealogists are seeking, and ancestors’ names can be found in other types of articles and listings in historic newspapers as well, including:

• lists of letters remaining in local post offices
• local news/gossip columns
• tax notices
• land claims
• news/entries from past years published in current papers
• school stories/honor role listings

There are 3200 county courthouses in the United States, and 644 of those have had records destroyed by fire or otherwise. Newspapers help to minimize these losses by providing an alternate record of vital information on ancestors, pinpointing people in time and space.

Social Media

• The rise of social media is contributing to the changing face of current news media and journalism. Now that anyone can post their own news announcements and opinions for the world to see, often with little or no editing or censorship, it is increasingly important to remember to view news reports of all kinds with a critical eye, checking sources, facts, and credibility before spreading the word.
• Social media outlets, such as Facebook, Flickr, and Pinterest, are increasingly being used by libraries to “spread the news” about collection materials, especially digital newspapers!
• In Nigeria, about 70% of the population has access to social media, and Nigerian libraries are starting to use social media outlets to promote their resources.

Access to Newspaper Content

• The University of North Texas’ Portal to Texas History website contains over 1.4 million pages of digital newspaper content, made possible by strategic partnerships between newspaper publishers, local libraries, and the University.
• The University of Utah’s Digital Newspapers website can be searched and browsed at the article level. In partnership with FamilySearch, the genealogical arm of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Utah is currently indexing all of the obituaries contained in their digital collection.
• The Arizona Digital Newspaper Program is working on an interactive museum exhibit featuring Arizona’s historic digital newspapers, to debut in April at the Arizona State Capitol Museum.
• The British Library in London is hard at work preserving and providing access to historic print newspapers, digitized newspapers, and current news, including current born-digital news websites, with a strategy of making all news media accessible to users in one location. The physical library space previously referred to as the “reading room,” is now called the “news room,” and users can research, collaborate, and network to celebrate all things news! The online British Newspaper Archive contains over 7.4 billion pages of newspaper content covering news from the 1700s up to the 1950s.
• Collaboration is key to ensuring preservation and increasing access to both historic and current newspapers!

Scholarly Use of Newspapers

The Library of Congress’ Chronicling America newspaper website has proven to be a very useful resource for scholars and researchers of all kinds. A full list of tips, resources, and scholarly use of Chronicling America content can be found on the Library of Congress’ Extra! Extra! NDNP Extras! web page. Here are just a few examples of digital scholarship projects based on Chronicling America content:

• The Growth of U.S. Newspapers 1690-2011 (Stanford University)
• Mapping Texts: Assessing Newspaper Quality and Language Patterns (University of North Texas and Stanford University)
• Data Mining the 1918 Influenza Pandemic (Virginia Tech and University of Toronto)

Information on how to download bulk full text from Chronicling America’s newspapers can be found at http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/ocr/.

A recent content analysis of dissertations and theses at the University of Arizona Libraries found that students from a variety of disciplines, including history, communication/journalism, political science, sociology, education, literature, arts, and foreign language/literature, have used newspapers in their research. The majority of students used current newspapers published in North America, with a small percentage, mostly in the foreign language/literature discipline, using newspapers published in other countries. Historic newspapers were mostly utilized by history students.

Preservation of Historic Newspapers

• Finnish national law, namely the “Act on Collecting and Preserving Cultural Materials (1433/2007),” requires that all newspapers published in Finland be kept in hard copy at the National Library of Finland, “to preserve the Finnish published heritage for coming generations” (National Library of Finland).
• Likewise, the British Library in London has undertaken an extensive program to preserve and store the printed hard copies of all newspapers from the U.K.; bound volumes of historic newspapers are shrink-wrapped and stored in a temperature and oxygen-controlled facility, and a robotic system is used to retrieve papers for use by researchers.
• Unlike our European counterparts, rather than go to great lengths to store printed hard copy newspapers here in the United States, we have turned to microfilm as the preferred archival format for newspapers. From 1982-2011, the federal United States Newspaper Project (USNP) provided over $50 million of funding for libraries across the U.S. to microfilm and catalog historic U.S. newspapers. However, no funding was allocated for preservation or storage of print hard copies, as these were considered local, rather than national, affairs.
• Some concerned parties have compared historic print newspapers in the United States to the Passenger Pigeon, which is now extinct. Like the Passenger Pigeon, newspapers have been so abundant throughout history that it has seemed like no big deal to just throw them away, especially since many have been made available on microfilm, and now in digital format. Proponents of print newspaper preservation argue that the black and white images available on microfilm render many color printed graphics meaningless, not to mention that many newspapers have been filmed in poor condition or with gaps in content, leaving portions unreadable and thus un-usable. Also, who knows what kinds of future technologies might emerge in say, 5o years? For example, 3D digital might be the next advancement, and microfilm or current digital files might not suffice in a transition to future formats.
• However, there are some institutions in the U.S. that have committed to preserving print copies, such as Duke University, which houses about 10,000 various titles in print, and the University of Utah’s ARC, or Automated Retrieval Center, where print newspapers are stored in lightweight, water-resistant Coroplast boxes.

The last portion of historic Oregon newspaper content from our 2011 National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP) grant has just been added to Historic Oregon Newspapers online as well as the Library of Congress’ Chronicling America website! The following additions can now be browsed and searched at both websites:

(Astoria, Or.) The Daily Morning Astorian. Feb. 1, 1893-Sept. 1, 1899

• View The Daily Morning Astorian at Historic Oregon Newspapers
• View The Daily Morning Astorian at Chronicling America

(Astoria, Or.) The Morning Astorian. Sept. 2, 1899-Feb. 7, 1902

• View The Morning Astorian at Historic Oregon Newspapers
• View The Morning Astorian at Chronicling America

(Grants Pass, Or.) Grants Pass Daily Courier. Jan. 2, 1919-Oct. 28, 1919

• View the Grants Pass Daily Courier at Historic Oregon Newspapers
• View the Grants Pass Daily Courier at Chronicling America

(Pendleton, Or.) East Oregonian: E.O. Oct. 2, 1914-March 30, 1915

• View the East Oregonian: E.O. at Historic Oregon Newspapers
• View the East Oregonian: E.O. at Chronicling America

We are currently working on digitizing even more content with our 2013 NDNP award, so stay tuned for more announcements as new content becomes available.