What changed
The Palisade Historical Society is digitizing more than 5,000 Palisade Tribune articles published between 1903 and 2006. The articles are being placed online through the Colorado Historical Newspaper Collection, with the remaining work targeted for late 2026 or early 2027.
Why it matters
The Palisade Tribune was the town’s newspaper of record from June 3, 1903, until it closed in March 2014. Its pages hold a century of local memory, and volunteers first had to rescue and organize the physical archive before the material could be processed.
That work now gives teachers, genealogists and reporters a way to use the archive without handling fragile paper. It also shows why small historical projects rarely run on nostalgia alone: each batch costs thousands of dollars, while the nonprofit society depends on volunteers and donations.
The digitization is not finished, and the final date and total cost remain uncertain. But the project has already moved Palisade’s past from shelves into an online collection, while the Palisade Museum continues preserving other artifacts, including school class photos and possessions connected to Colorado Rep. Wayne N. Aspinall.
The museum itself is free and open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Its building, a log structure built in 1939, is part of that history too. The larger point is simple: preserving yesterday requires decisions made today, before the paper, photographs and objects become harder to save.
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