The Lake Stevens Historical Society was thrilled to receive news that they were awarded another Community Heritage Grant by the Historic Preservation Commission in 2021. In 2018 they received $8,000 which covered close to 30 years (1957-1985) of newspaper digitization and in 2019 they received an additional $11,500.00 which covered another 20 years (later issues were bigger and you pay per page). We have received our third Community Heritage Grant for $11,000.00 which will cover the cost of digitizing the last 16 years of  our local newspapers. When this completed we now have digitized 60 years worth of local papers. We are excited to preserve this history for Lake Stevens residents, visitors  and future generations.

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The Community Heritage Program provides financial resources to assist the collection, preservation and interpretation of Snohomish County’s heritage. The program is funded with a portion of document recording fees collected by the Snohomish County Auditor. These fees are set aside for projects that “promote historical preservation or historical programs, which may include preservation of historic documents.” The latest Newspaper Digitization project cost $13,580.00 and the Lake Stevens Historical Society has been collecting donations for their portion, $2,580.00, of this project.

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Several decades of Lake Stevens newspapers had been stored in boxes and it had been one of the nonprofit organizations top priorities to preserve this historical information which would eventually be lost to physical deterioration. They also realized that there was a wealth of information in these newspapers but no way of archiving this information in a more accessible way. This project will now allow museum visitors and patrons who wish to conduct research online, the ability to search over 7,000 newspapers up to 2017 by keyword or name. Digitizing these issues will be especially beneficial, since the one published history book of the Lake Stevens area only covers our history up until the 1950's.

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The Lake Stevens Historical Society is excited to preserve this history for Lake Stevens residents, visitors and future generations. We are still accepting donations to cover the additional digitization of newspapers from 1986 to the present, and are looking for additional older editions of Lake Stevens newspapers that may be sitting in attics or garages.

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For donations or to get more information, you can mail us at Lake Stevens Museum, PO Box 874, Lake Stevens, WA 98258, or leave a message at (425) 212-3320, at the museum facebook page or email us at lakestevenshistoricalsociety@gmail.com.

 

We would like to thank the Snohomish County Preservation Commission. Their generosity has allowed us to preserve a great portion of our local history and is greatly appreciated.

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