A newspaper repository has opened at the Marshfield Sun Printing Museum in Coos Bay, Oregon, reports the Spring 2018 issue of Oregon Historical Quarterly, journal of the Portland-based Oregon Historical Society.

Lionel Youst's short article reports that the repository features a 100-year print run (1907-2007) of the daily Coos Bay Times and its successor, the Coos Bay World. The repository also includes incomplete runs of local weekly newspapers: Coast Mail, Marshfield Sun, Empire Builder, and the weekly editions of the Southwestern Oregon News and Coos Bay Times.

Youst estimates that the collection is comprised of 30,000 newspaper issues or about 300,000 pages of newsprint.

He recounts that in 1906, local business people bought two weekly newspapers, the Coast Mail and the Marshfield Advertiser and merged them together to form the daily Coos Bay Times. The Times belonged to the Associated Press and later also United Press International.

"For more than twenty years, until December 31, 1927, the Coos Bay Times was owned, published and edited by brothers Michael and Dan Maloney. Michael had worked for prominent newspapers in the East, knew the business and transformed the newspaper. A painted sign on their office window said, 'Independent and Unafraid.' This was a message from the Catholic Maloney brothers to the Ku Klux Klan, which was quite strong in  1920s Oregon and was supported by the rival Southwestern Oregon Daily News," Youst writes.

In 1930, Sheldon Sackett bought the Coos Bay Times. He also owned part of the McMinnville (OR) Telegraph Register and the Oregon Statesman in Salem, and later owned several radio stations and weekly newspapers in Oregon, Washington state, and California.

Youst calls him "volatile, dynamic, but eccentric," and quotes a local journalist who, in 1974, wrote that Youst pursued an "extremely personal, often brilliant, journalistic adventure."

Youst also points out, "In addition to the newspaper repository, it [Marshfield Sun Printing Museum] preserves the plant and equipment of the last handset newspaper in Oregon and one of the last in the United States. It [museum] is open Memorial Day to Labor Day, Tuesday through Saturday, 1 to 4 p.m., and other times by appointment. For information, contact the repository curator [Youst himself], (541) 267-3762, lionel@wildblue.net, or the Coos Bay Area Visitor's Center at (541) 269-0215."