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Chronicling America
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Newspaper Great Falls Tribune (Great Falls, Mont.) 1921-Current Tribune

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About Great Falls Tribune (Great Falls, Mont.) 1921-Current

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 opening of 18 million acres of Indian land to homesteading, while printing racist tirades against Native populations in Montana. During its first year of operation, the Tribune ran the following headline and story on its front page: “Lo the Poor Indian – Stories That Give Insight into the Character of the Red Man – The Indian is progressive. He is fast becoming civilized. An Indian shot and killed his squaw and then blew his own brains out.” What the story does not explain is the deplorable state of the reservation Indian whose source of livelihood, the buffalo, had been exterminated during the previous decade, and his land taken by the railroads and white homesteaders with the help of Congress. In 1889, the year of Montana statehood, the paper reported the great progress made by reservation Indians “who had given up horse stealing and the medicine lodge for domestic agriculture.” Of course, the Tribune was not alone in its depiction of Montana Natives.

In 1895, William Bole and Oliver S. Warden, both New England transplants, purchased the Tribune and quickly established the newspaper as a voice independent of the Anaconda Copper Mining Company, which dominated Montana politics and the newspaper industry well into the 20th century.

Provided By: Montana Historical Society; Helena, MT

About this Newspaper

Title

  • Great Falls Tribune (Great Falls, Mont.) 1921-Current

Other Title

  • Tribune

Dates of Publication

  • 1921-current

Created / Published

  • Great Falls, Mont. : Tribune Co., 1921-

Headings

  • -  Great Falls (Mont.)--Newspapers
  • -  Cascade County (Mont.)--Newspapers
  • -  Montana--Cascade County
  • -  Montana--Great Falls
  • -  American newspapers--Montana
  • -  United States--Montana--Cascade--Great Falls

Genre

  • Newspapers

Notes

  • -  Daily
  • -  32nd year (Jan. 11, 1921)-
  • -  Publication suspended Oct. 20-Dec. 18, 1974.
  • -  Also issued on microfilm from Bell & Howell Information and Learning.
  • -  Archived issues are available in digital format from the Library of Congress Chronicling America online collection.
  • -  Latest issue consulted: 115th year, no. 354 (Apr. 30, 2000).

Medium

  • volumes

Call Number/Physical Location

  • Newspaper

Digital Id

Library of Congress Control Number

  • sn83045217

OCLC Number

  • 9374534

ISSN Number

  • 2378-850x

Preceding Titles

Additional Metadata Formats

Availability

Rights & Access

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. Any newspapers in Chronicling America that were published less than 95 years ago are also believed to be in the public domain, but may contain some copyrighted third party materials. Researchers using newspapers published less than 95 years ago should be alert for modern content (for example, registered and renewed for copyright and published with notice) that may be copyrighted. Responsibility for making an independent legal assessment of an item and securing any necessary permissions ultimately rests with persons desiring to use the item.

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Cite This Item

Citations are generated automatically from bibliographic data as a convenience, and may not be complete or accurate.

Chicago citation style:

Great Falls Tribune Great Falls, Mont. -Current. (Great Falls, MT), Jan. 1 1921. https://aj.sunback.homes/item/sn83045217/.

APA citation style:

(1921, January 1) Great Falls Tribune Great Falls, Mont. -Current. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://aj.sunback.homes/item/sn83045217/.

MLA citation style:

Great Falls Tribune Great Falls, Mont. -Current. (Great Falls, MT) 1 Jan. 1921. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, aj.sunback.homes/item/sn83045217/.