Thanks to our partners at the Watauga County Public Library, DigitalNC is proud to announce that brand new issues of the Blowing Rocket are now available online for the very first time! The new issues will bring DigitalNC’s collection of Blowing Rockets to an 89 issues, spanning from 1933 to 1950. Many of these issues have been preserved on microfilm, while others have been in the North Carolina Collection.

The Blowing Rocket covered local, state, and national new stories and served the greater Watauga County area in North Carolina for over three decades. While the paper received their namesake from Blowing Rock, other cities that received the paper included Boone, Valle Crucis, and Foscoe. Interestingly, the establishment of the publication precedes the space-race that captured the imagination and obsession of Americans in the last half of the twentieth century. Were the founders of The Blowing Rocket trendsetters, psychics, or did they just love puns? Read these issues and find out for yourself!

You can find the new issues of The Blowing Rocket online now on DigitalNC here. Interested in more materials from Watauga County? You can find our amazing partners at Watauga County Public Library online at their partner page on DigitalNC here, or at their website online here. Interested in more amusing paper names? You can find Ocracoke Island’s “Mullet Wrapper” online at NC Digital here, or a single issue of “Beans” online here.