The Ketchum Keystone (Ketchum, Idaho)
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
184 issues from 1881 to 1884, published in Ketchum, Idaho, digitised for Chronicling America.
The Ketchum Keystone became the fourth newspaper to be published in Idaho’s Wood River region on December 24, 1881. It was preceded by the Wood River Miner in Hailey, the Wood River News in Bellevue, and the Wood River Times in Hailey. The Ketchum postmaster, H.E. Cook, was listed as the editor in the early issues of the Keystone. In the first issue, Cook included an explanation for the title of the newspaper, “Ketchum, situated as she is in the very heart and center of the Wood River mining country, is the Keystone City of this vast newly discovered mineral field.” He also noted that politics and religion would appear in the paper “when a cause demands it, but until such time they will not be discussed.”
The Ketchum Keystone was a four-column, four-page paper published weekly. In July 1882, half of the business was sold to Charles Foster, a newspaper man who had worked on the Idaho Statesman, the Idaho World, and the Wood River Miner. In August of that year, George J. Lewis purchased the other half of the Ketchum Keystone, and with his involvement, the paper became Democratic. Lewis was the son of an early Ketchum settler who had been a mine owner and local businessman. Lewis had no newspaper experience, yet the Keystone flourished with his involvement.
In January 1883, George J. Lewis’s brother, Horace Lewis, bought out Foster’s interest in the Keystone, and the two brothers began issuing the paper as a semiweekly in June. The motto under the masthead read, “The Sole…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Ketchum, 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