"The strongest memory is fainter than the palest ink."

Around 1985, a group of people started the Nostalgic News project to save Lake County newspapers and make them available to future researchers. Volunteers donated their time and services, ensuring that all the money given went directly to microfilming the newspapers. Thanks to Marion Goebel, Bob Abercrombie, and others, we can now view these microfilms at the County Library in Lakeport and Redbud (only the Clear Lake Observer and Lake County Record-Bee at Redbud).

When the project finished, the leftover money was given to the Lake County Genealogical Society to help preserve more newspapers for the future. In the late 1990s, the Society used some of this money to microfilm the Lake County Avalanche from the California State Library's collection and donated a copy to the State Library, in addition to the County of Lake's collection. The rest of the money has been saved & added to for future Nostalgic News projects.

The Newspaper Morgue

In December 2019, Marilyn G., a member of the Lake County Genealogical Society and a genealogist researcher, visited the Lake County Record-Bee to look at a bound copy of the Clear Lake Observer for family history research. The staff told her that the newspapers wouldn't be available much longer because the whole facility needed to be cleared out by mid-January. The staff were out of ideas and running out of time before they had to move. The old newspapers were at risk of being lost. Even though the Society didn't have its own place, our volunteers arranged to move the volumes to the Joy Madeiros Veterans Museum in Lakeport.

About one-third of the newspapers in the collection have not been microfilmed and are in a fragile state, due to their age and the fact that newsprint is not archival quality.

Newspapers were the social media of the day... The gossip columns, the birth, marriages and death notices, the land and court records... business advertising, sports and religion and politics... it can all be found in the old newspapers, and your ancestors most likely made the newspapers. Wouldn't you be thrilled to read about them and learn more about their lives?

Please Donate to the Nostalgic News to help preserve the past for the future. Help make it possible, any donation helps!