Thanks to a partnership between the Sedona Historical Society and Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Record’s Arizona Memory Project, the Sedona Historical Society began pursuing grants two years ago from the Arizona Community Foundation of Sedona and the Arizona Historical Society to digitize back issues of the Larson Newspapers’ Red Rock News from 1963 to 1980 as it was then know and the Sedona Red Rock News from 1980 to 1987.
The historical society worked with a specialized vendor to digitize 800 issues of the newspaper, scanning over 20,000 pages and creating over 50,000 images in a variety of formats to meet prescribed Library of Congress standards.
We will have a full story on this great public project next week. Special thanks to Sedona Historical Society Historian Janeen Trevillyan and her staff for making the project possible. The first almost 24 years of past issues of Sedona’s first and only real newspaper will soon be available online.
Readers will be able to zoom in and read the text on all the pages:
The content will be keyword-searchable so readers looking for particular stories can pinpoint what they’re searching for:
Prior to the arrival of the Red Rock News, several short-lived newspapers were published in Sedona. These included the Sedona Spectator started in 1958, which shuttered after only 6 months; the Red Rock Arrow, which was printed for just four months, from February to May of 1958; The Oak Creek Bark, mimeographed by the Sedona-Oak Creek Canyon Chamber of Commerce from 1959 to 1960; The Oak Creek Sedonan, which lasted four months in early 1962; and finally, the Hardscrabble News, also published for a short time in 1962.
On the heels of the Hardscrabble News, Robert S. and Loretta Larson launched the Red Rock News creating a newspaper that prospered and stuck.
For now, check out a sample, our complete first edition of the Red Rock News, published on Oct. 3, 1963.
