Colorado genealogical researchers can access information about nearly 2,500 Colorado newspapers by visiting the Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers (BETA) section of the Library of Congress Web site.
There you will find a database of historical and current newspapers, plus images of twenty-five American newspapers. The images are from newspapers of the District of Columbia (14) and the states of California (1), Florida (6), Kentucky (1), New York (1), Utah (1), and Virginia (1), and only from issues published between the years 1900-1910.
However - for all researchers - the most valuable part of this site is the Newspaper Title Directory, a database which you can search based on various criteria. For instance, you can get a list of:
- All newspapers published in Weld County, Colorado (90).
- All newspapers published in the town of Como, Colorado (2).
- Newspapers published in Colorado Springs between 1890 and 1900 (36) … but the results include papers with unknown dates.
- Colorado newspapers with “Blade” in the title (20) … the results include papers where “Blade” was part of the preceding or succeeding title.
- Ethnic newspapers, such as all the African-American newspapers published in Colorado (14).
- German language newspapers published in Colorado (18).
For any newspaper in the database, you can get more details by clicking on the title. In addition to the data mentioned above, you’ll find names of publishers and frequency of publication. From this “About this Newspaper” view, you can then click on “Libraries that have it” or “Holdings” and get a list of repositories where you can see the newspaper. For instance, three libraries have copies of the Montrose Messenger, which began publishing in 1882:
- Colorado Hist Soc Libr, Denver, CO: Microfilm <1882:11:23> <1883:4:5>
- Kansas State Hist Soc, Newsp Proj, Topeka, KS: Original <1882:11:23> <1888:7:12>
- Pueblo City Cnty Libr Dist, Pueblo, CO: Microfilm <1889:7:11-9:12>
The National Digital Newspaper Program is a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Library of Congress. The database is derived from the library catalog records created as part of the United States Newspaper Program, 1980-2007. You can get more information about these programs at “About Chronicling America.”