Great Falls Tribune (Great Falls, Mont.)
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
280 issues from 1887 to 1890, published in Great Falls, Montana, digitised for Chronicling America.
The first issue of the Great Falls Tribune appeared on May 14, 1885. It was edited by newspaperman, Will Hanks, who began his career in Sun River, Montana. In this issue, Hanks hailed Montana as “the paradise of sportsmen and stock growers,” as well as recognizing the Missouri River, which flowed through Great Falls, as a potential source of power. In a real estate ad, Hanks described the “falls of the Missouri” as the “greatest available water on the Continent.” The four-page, seven-column weekly newspaper also lauded the area’s mineral potential and specifically the Sand Coulee coal deposits.
The city of Great Falls emerged with the arrival of Jim Hill’s Great Northern Railroad in 1887 and following promotion by the city’s founder, Paris Gibson, a St. Paul businessman and sheepman. Real estate agents advertised in the fledgling weekly that Great Falls would soon be the “manufacturing metropolis” of Montana. One year later, Great Falls boasted its first silver smelter, the Montana Smelting Company, and by 1891 it had its first copper smelter at the Boston and Montana Company, located adjacent to the first hydroelectric dam on the Missouri at Black Eagle Falls.
On May 16, 1887, the Great Falls Tribune published its first daily edition in the same building that printed the weekly. The Tribune remained a Democratic voice throughout, supporting Joseph K. Toole for governor and Martin Maginnis for Congress. The newspaper, like the city’s founder, Paris Gibson, supported the…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Great Falls, 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