Our partners at the Transylvania County Library have contributed a trove of company newspapers that we are excited to make available on DigitalNC. The Ecusta Paper Mill operated in Brevard, North Carolina from 1939 to 2002, specializing in cigarette paper and cellophane. The paper mill was a major economic force in the region, employing thousands of Transylvania County residents. From 1949 to 1987, the plant was owned and operated by Olin Industries. During this period, the plant published a newspaper covering events, programs, and people at the Ecusta Paper Mill. We have digitized exactly 99 issues of the newspaper, known as both The Olin News and The Olin Profile, dating from 1967 to 1985. The Olin News covers 1967-1979, while The Olin Profile covers 1980-1985. Visitors to the site will find this newspaper to be a rich resource for researching the history of the Ecusta Paper Mill and the people who worked there.

The 2002 closure of the mill sent shockwaves through the community, where it had become an institution over the course of six decades. Brevard has since rebounded by leaning into tourism centered on its natural resources and beautiful mountain landscapes. Today the former site of the Ecusta Paper Mill is home to Ecusta Brewing Company and an in-progress 19-mile greenway that will eventually connect Brevard, Penrose, Etowah, Horse Shoe, the Town of Laurel Park, and the City of Hendersonville. It is also a Superfund redevelopment site, with work focusing on depolluting the Davidson River and reclaiming the area for recreational use.

The Transylvania County Library has contributed over one thousand yearbooks, city directories, photographs, and more, as well as seven newspaper titles. View all of their digitized materials on DigitalNC at their contributor page here, and visit their website here to learn more.

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.

Thanks to our amazing partners at the New Hanover County Public Library, DigitalNC is proud to announce that a brand new collection of The Wilmington Morning Star are now available online! These brand new issues cover the entirety of a single year, from sunrise of New Years Day to sunset of New Years Eve, 1923. These issues will join over twenty thousand historic issues of The Wilmington Morning Star already online on DigitalNC, which spans from 1867 to 1947.

The Wilmington Morning Star was a daily newspaper that served New Hanover County for over a century, reporting local and national news to coastal North Carolina. Each issue covers topics of national concern, features advertisements from businesses across the east coast, and reports on the daily occurrences of coastal Carolina life. This batch offers a unique opportunity to read the daily experience of a Carolinian from exactly a century ago. Interested in what The Wilmington Morning Star was reporting on a hundred and one years before your birthday? This batch has you covered! Curious about how twentieth century Tar Heels observed Groundhog’s Day, Arbor Day, or President’s Day? This batch has an issue on each of those days! A search of the author’s “birthday issue” (October 29!) featured this amazing story about a skunk army, possibly one of the coolest articles in the entire collection (in her unbiased opinion).

You can find each of these 363 issues online now at DigitalNC here. Interested in reading more of this historic newspaper? Find DigitalNC’s complete collection of The Wilmington Morning Star online here. Thanks again to our amazing partners at the New Hanover County Public Library for making these issues available. You can find their partner page at DigitalNC online here, or discover their website online here.

Thanks to our partners, Little River Historical Society and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, as well as funding from the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA), issues dating from 1956 to 1963 of The Zebulon Record are now available for viewing on DigitalNC.

Looking to connect Raleigh to Wilson, the Raleigh and Pamlico Sound Railroad (later named Norfolk and Southern Railroad) investors sought to lay track through the already established Town of Wakefield, but were turned down by property owners. Instead, the investors moved the connection site 1.5 miles south of Wakefield. From this connection site, the Town of Zebulon was born, receiving its charter on February 17, 1907. In addition to the train connection site, Zebulon’s increased growth can be attributed to its status as having the best soil for growing tobacco in eastern North Carolina as well as a tobacco market which opened in 1917. Tobacco, however, was not the only crop grown in Zebulon.

Originating in South or Central America, sweet potatoes have been grown in North Carolina since at least 1723. Linked to the decline in tobacco, North Carolina farmer began using their surplus land to grow sweet potatoes. Since then, North Carolina has risen to the largest producer of sweet potatoes in the United States. In 2021, the state produced 64% of America’s total production.

At a Zebulon Farm Bureau meeting in February 1955, Foster Finch proposed farmers grow sweet potatoes on the land that would be unused that season as a result of reduced tobacco allotments. Finch, the Wakelon Trading Corporation operator, even agreed to provide storage space for the sweet potatoes (minimum 15,000 bushels of course), along with taking responsibility for curing them. However, without a marketing outlet for the sweet potatoes at the time and lack of confidence that they would be able to produce the minimum bushels, farmers were timid to join the project.

To combat this, a marketing specialist from the North Carolina Department of Agriculture [May 13, 1955] as well as sweet potato and NC State Extension experts were brought to Zebulon to teach farmers the best growing techniques and discuss factors they should consider in producing and marketing their sweet potatoes. View our newly added issues from 1956 to 1963 of The Zebulon Record to learn more about the outcome of the sweet potato project.

To learn more about Little River Historical Society, visit their website here.

To view more newspapers from across North Carolina, visit our newspaper collection.

Information and images in this blog post not from DigitalNC was gathered from the following resources: Zebulon Chamber of Commerce, NC State University Libraries’ Rare and Unique Digital Collections, and the North Carolina History Project.

Our collection of The Bessemer City Record has just expanded, thanks to our partners at the Bessemer City History and Arts Society. Since 1995, The Bessemer City History and Arts Society has preserved and shared the town’s history, and we are excited to help make these newspapers available digitally for anyone to read. With this newest addition, DigitalNC now hosts complete runs of the paper from 1964-1967, 1969, 1971, 1972, 1979-1981, as well as various issues from 1958-1960, 1968, 1970, 1972-1977, and 1994. Additionally, this batch includes a single issue of The Gastonia Gazette from December 4, 1968. With thirty years now at least partially covered on the site, researchers and genealogists can take advantage of the amazing resource that is The Bessemer City Record to gain insight into the local and national issues that concerned Bessemer City residents.

See all digitized issues of The Bessemer City Record here, and visit the Bessemer City History and Arts Society contributor page here to learn more. To browse all of the newspapers we have available on DigitalNC, you can find them here.