Gazettes online from 1900 through 1912

A historic run of Gazette newspapers was recently launched online by a national program, joining hundreds of other historic newspapers.

Editions of the Colfax Gazette from 1900 to 1912 are now accessible online at chroniclingamerica.loc.gov.

The Web site is free and can be word-searched.

Sections of eight other Washington state papers have also been uploaded, said Laura Robinson, manager of the Washington State Library program.

“The reason they picked the Colfax Gazette is, at that time, it was the most important paper in Whitman County,” Robinson said.

Whitman County largely relied on the Colfax Gazette for the latest news.

Washington State Library is among 15 state organizations who joined the “Chronicling America” project which is funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and directed by the national Library of Congress.

Other papers in Eastern Washington now online are the Pullman Herald (1888-1893, 1907- 1922) and the Colville Examiner (1907-1922).

The entire project now includes 212 publications from 1880 to 1922.

Robinson said the project originated with the microfilm project taken on by the Library of Congress in the 1970s.

Historic editions were transferred to microfilm and those microfilm sheets are now being digitized. Those digital images are the images now being loaded on line.

For a state to receive the grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, they must agree to upload 50,000 pages a year, Robinson said.

“We’re actually digitizing that microfilm right now,” she said. Robinson, who is paid through grant funding, is the National Digital Newspaper Program manager for Washington State.

The Colfax Gazette was merged with the Colfax Commoner at the start of 1933, and the paper was known as the Gazette-Commoner until 1958 when it was shortened to the Colfax Gazette. The name was changed to the Whitman County Gazette in 1989 to better reflect its county readership.

The volume number at the top of the front page of the Gazette, now 134, goes back to the start of the Palouse Gazette.

Historic editions of the Gazette on microfilm are available at WSU’s Holland library.