The Mellette County Pioneer (Wood, Mellette County, S.D.) 19??-1971
Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.
565 issues from 1912 to 1924, published in Wood, South Dakota, digitised for Chronicling America.
In early 1912, a group of South Dakota citizens led by G. L. Watson formed a stock company, the Wood Publishing Company. The group purchased a small printing press and on February 16, 1912, they published the first issue of the Mellette County Pioneer, in the town of Wood. This weekly newspaper was the official paper of Mellette County, managed by B. R. Cole. Each Friday issue contained six columns on eight pages at an annual subscription rate of $1.50. The subscription rate did not change until January 4, 1918, when it increased to $2.00 annually.
In the first issue, the editor clarified the paper’s news outlook by stating, “Mudslinging will be no part of our stock in trade, believing as we do that time and space can be more profitably devoted to crying of your own wares than to decrying the wares of others. Just criticism is desirable, but the practice of dirty-low-down-mudslinging and petty-personal-spite-work, as is sometimes indulged, is disgusting and of no general interest.”
Mellette County had been created in 1909, 20 years after South Dakota became a state. It was named after the last Dakota Territory governor and the first state governor, Arthur C. Mellette. The county was originally part of the Great Sioux Reservation made up of the entire West River portion of South Dakota, as well as part of northern Nebraska and an eastern section of Montana. Since settlement was not allowed in this area until 1912, West River South Dakota counties were not organized as…
- Genres
- News
- Published in
- Wood, South Dakota, 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