Trove of historical local newspapers goes online

Sixteen newspapers from Jefferson County’s earliest years are now available for free online, thanks to a digitization program undertaken by the Jefferson County Museum.

Museum Director Melody Pesta announced on Oct. 19 that the museum “successfully completed our project of putting Jefferson County newspapers from 1885–1925 online at montananewspapers.org,” a searchable database of historical newspapers in Montana that is maintained by the Montana Historical Society in Helena. Texts of newspaper pages are searchable on the website, and high-resolution pages can be downloaded for free.

Newspapers included in the project represent the breadth of the county in an era of rapid exploration and expansion in the American West when seemingly every settlement had its own newspaper—or three.