SD State Historical Society/Office of History
For more information: Jeff Mammenga, 773-6000

PIERRE -- Twenty-three Davison County newspapers were recently inventoried and cataloged by the South Dakota Newspaper Project staff of the South Dakota State Historical Society at the Cultural Heritage Center.

Newspapers from the towns of Mitchell, Ethan and Firesteel were researched. Titles now available on a national library database include: Daily Republic, Dakota Daily Tribune, Davison County Democrat, Davison County Gazette, Davison County Tribune, Ethan Enterprise, Evening Republican, Farmer-Labor Leader, Jim River Advocate, Mitchell Capital, Mitchell Clarion, Mitchell Daily Republican, Mitchell Gazette, Mitchell Republican, Morning Republican, Mount Vernon Davison County News, Mount Vernon News, South Dakota Leader, S"ud Dakota Nachrichten, Sunday Republican, Union Labor Gazette and South Dakota Agitator, and Western Bugle.

The Davison County newspapers offer opportunities for area residents to understand about Davison County history, give genealogists precious information about relatives, and provide local historians with the raw material for county, town and regional histories. Patrons of the State Archives Research Room have also used South Dakota newspapers to provide an authentic feel in novels, provide background information for video documentaries and add to Great Plains scholarship.

The South Dakota Newspaper Project is part of the U.S. Newspaper Program, a National Endowment for the Humanities-funded effort to preserve and provide access to newspapers in all 50 states, published from Colonial times to the present. It is managed by the State Archives, a State Historical Society program.

Although the State Archives has preserved hundreds of newspaper titles on more than 14,000 microfilm reels, some newspapers are missing. Conspicuously absent from Davison County are the first four volumes and 1901of the Mitchell Gazette, the first three volumes and June 1908 through March 1915 of the Ethan Enterprise, and the first seven volumes of the Mitchell Capital.

Catalog records for many South Dakota newspapers are available on the Internet through the South Dakota Library Network (SDLN) at: http://www.state.sd.us/library/. Click on either the WebPALs or SDLN icon. If searching WebPALS, searchers should click on "Search WebPALS," then choose the South Dakota State Archives library from the menu. If using telnet to connect to SDLN, enter the command "lib sdh" at the SDLN prompt. Some libraries have access to SDLN on public terminals as well.

Catalog and holdings records are also available through OCLC’s Online Union Catalog, the largest, most comprehensive and most-used international database of information about library materials. Scholars worldwide can now see the South Dakota resources available for interlibrary loan.

If you have old newspapers, or know someone with some, please contact LaVera Rose with the South Dakota Newspaper Project at (605) 773-3780. The SDNP address is: State Archives, 900 Governors Drive, Pierre, SD 57501-2217.

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