The Silver Messenger (Challis, Idaho)
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
920 issues from 1894 to 1912, published in Challis, Idaho, digitised for Chronicling America.
Royal A. Pierce first published the Idaho Messenger on May 21, 1881, in Challis, Idaho, the largest town in the newly formed Custer County. Pierce, an attorney by trade, had followed the mining rush to the mountains of central Idaho. He published the first issue of the paper on a half sheet because of lack of supplies. Pierce worked to expand the publication, and in 1888 sold the Idaho Messenger to Milton Melvin Sweet.
In July 1890, its name was changed to the Silver Messenger with the slogan, “Free and Unlimited Coinage at the Ratio of 16:1.”This new name represented the interests of the mining community, which supported the Populist Free Silver movement. At this time, the federal government had stopped producing silver coinage, which decreased the amount of money in circulation and tightened the country’s money supply. Proponents of the Free Silver movement, mostly in rural farming or mining regions of the country, sought to reintroduce silver coins to make the money supply more flexible. Back in 1837, Congress had established that 16 ounces of silver would be equal in value to one ounce of gold. The movement was ultimately unsuccessful, however, and in 1912, the Silver Messenger became the Challis Messenger, wherein Sweet noted, “This change is made because silver is no longer an issue and has not been for several years past.” The new slogan of the Challis Messenger became, “Covers Central Idaho Like the Mountains Do.”
Published weekly on Wednesdays, the Messenger…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Challis, Idaho, 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