Hope you don’t mind if I cross post this info – but for a couple of
years I used the New York Times Online as a paid monthly service for
historical research. They recently dropped the monthly service and
are basically giving away ALL of their newspaper articles from 1851
to 1922 as they are considered Public Domain.

What this means for us historical researchers is that we can now go
to their website and download the .pdf files and save them for free!
Not a bad price considering trips to libraries and the prices of
photocopies and all of that. If you want any files from 1923 to 1986
it will cost you $3.95 an article. [1987 to now is still free]

It take’s a little while to figure out their archive search engine as
it brings up EVERY article of the subject you chose regardless of the
date, so there may be 20,000 articles you would have to search
through. So…here’s a little trick I use – let’s say you want to know
about James J. Hill in Montana, well, if you type [with the quotation
marks “James J. Hill” and then with a space type Montana after that
without quotation marks, it will bring up all the James J. Hill
articles with Montana in the article first then all the others. I
can’t remember what kind of a search that is called but it narrows
the search find down a lot. You can search as specific as you like.
Just remember only the 1851 to 1922 articles are free. If you click
on an article between 1923 and 1986, you won’t get charged by mistake
or anything – you just won’t be able to view it without setting up an
account and everything.

For railroad and other “Western” history researchers, those are the
best years anyway, as in reality; these were the “Golden Years” of
Western development in mining, timber, railroads, etc. There are all
of the railroad annual reports, stock market stuff, new lines,
proposed lines, new equipment, mining activities, lumbering, just
about everything you can think of – the New York Times of this era
was very in touch with railroads and happenings in the “Wild West”.

Here’s the url - [www.nytimes.com]

When you get to the home page, look down right below NYT logo and
you’ll see the “Search” area. It’s set by default to “NYT Archive
Since1981” – just click on the drop down box and you’ll find the “NYT
Archive 1851 to 1980” - type in your search request and off you go.
I’ve been using the site for a couple of years and found that it is a
very good source of information. Of course, since it is a national
paper, some of the articles may not be as detailed as “local” or
regional newspapers. But, as I said, you can’t beat the price and you
can research whenever you want as long as you want – not just when
the library is open.

Have fun everyone and please share what you find in your particular
research subject.

Talk to ya later,
Dale Jones

www.montanarailroadhistory.info

BTW: I don’t work for the New York Times or anything like that – I’m
just trying to help folks dig up the past and share it with others.