The Wibaux Pioneer (Wibaux, Mont.)
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
415 issues from 1907 to 1914, published in Wibaux, Montana, digitised for Chronicling America.
On January 17, 1907, Walter A. Shear and John H. Kane published the first issue of the Wibaux [Montana] Pioneer in which they described Wibaux as “the first town in Montana,” that is, the first community established west of the North Dakota border. The paper described Wibaux as a “typical hustling, western town with metropolitan ideas and 500 inhabitants.” According to the editors, Wibaux could be identified by its freshly painted houses and pretty lawns, with “no idlers about, and no man without a job or something to keep him busy.” The Pioneer went on to list the businesses in town: two banks, two hotels, three saloons, three churches, one barbershop, three general stores, one dentist and a physician, three stage lines, and the Northern Pacific Railway. The year 1907 coincided with a major homestead boom in eastern Montana which continued until the arrival of drought in 1917. Early issues of the Pilot featured photographs of Wibaux’s Main Street, and editorials called for a new county of Wibaux to be split off from Dawson County.
The four-page, six-column weekly rarely skipped an issue, even in 1929 when heavy rains filled the basement pressroom with five feet of water and the editors sought help from publishers in nearby Glendive. The paper continues to publish today under the title of Wibaux Pioneer-Gazette.
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Wibaux, Montana, United States
- Language
- English
- Collection
- Chronicling America
- Licence or status
- None stated by the archive
- Rights
- The Library of Congress believes that the newspapers in Chronicling America are in the public domain or have no known copyright restrictions. Newspapers published in the United States more than 95 years ago are in the public domain in their entirety.
- Credit
- Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities
- Who can read it
- Teens profiles and older (placed by Invisible Network from what the archive says; archives give no ratings)
- Archive
- Library of Congress