My Take: Saying goodbye to the Arizona Silver Belt

 The Arizona Silver Belt had been around since 1878 and  led to an dispute over whether it was the oldest newspaper in Arizona. The Tombstone Epitaph claimed that honor, since the Silver Belt ceased publication for about a year during the Great Depression.

The Silver Belt's history was a colorful one, with the original owner reportedly bringing a portable press over the mountains to Globe, AZ, from Silver City, NM, via pack mule.

There was plenty to report in an area that was seeing a silver boom, the reason for the newspaper's name. In its early days, the isolated boomtown saw gunfights, lynchings, a stagecoach robbery reportedly led by a female outlaw, and raids by Apaches. 

Characters out of the often  myth-filled  Wild West were said to have stopped by or even lived in Globe for a time. Later came daily publication and an Associated Press wire.

The railroad arrived near the  end of the 19th century, bringing passenger service and links to the East for the growing copper mining industry bankrolled by the tycoons of the day.

The original owner's relative later sold the Silver Belt and headed to to San Diego, only to return and launch the Arizona Record in Globe. The Silver Belt had been moved by its mining and real estate developer owner to my hometown of Miami. 

Things headed south for Miami in the 1950s when the underground mine closed and a new road over the mountain  made trips to the shopping centers in the Phoenix-Mesa area less difficult. Rumors of an open pit mine swallowing the town or Route 60 bypassing it altogether didn’t help when deciding whether to fix up the family home.

And while,  stores on Sullivan and Live Oak streets  closed over the years,  the mining town's brothel near the firehouse stuck around for a few years.  One of the bars that hung around for a while  was  the "Glory Hole," a  term for a rich mineral deposit. It has a different meaning these days.

One of my early memories was seeing the Silver Belt's presses being hauled away when press  operations were combined with those of the Arizona Record. in Globe. The papers later merged, with readers voting to keep the Arizona Silver Belt name. The company even built a new office and printing plant.

In the end,  waste dumps only nibbled away at  Miami's edges with a bypass on the back burner.  Still, copper deposits lie underground, with a  Canadian mining  company  snapping up mineral holdings once owned by the town's founder-developer. 

Despite these changes, the  Silver Belt, for decades,  did the things that kept subscribers paying for a weekly copy, with a blend of sports, death notices, government news and social notes.

What followed was a familiar tale as local advertising melted away. The Silver Belt was acquired by Gatehouse,  a chain known for cutting costs and staff, even during good times.

In 2008, Gatehouse acquired the Dover Post Co. in Delaware and at around the same time sold The Silver Belt to News Media Corp., a smaller chain.

What followed in Delaware years later was a merger of Gatehouse and Gannett, with the company shutting down Dover's Post weeklies around the state.

In Arizona, Illinois-based News Media Corp. ended up with two newspapers hundreds of miles apart in Page and Globe, and few options other than bringing in new publishers and cutting costs.

The end came last week when the remaining News Media small town papers in a handful of states suddenly shut down after the company apparently failed to find a buyer. Wyoming, which doesn't have that many newspapers in the first place, was especially hard hit.

It was clear the end was coming. The Silver Belt's website was stuck in 2024, with the subscription-only online   e-newspaper the only updated item. Of late, obituaries were posted on Facebook. Subscribers had reportedly dropped to less than 1,000 as of 2022.

There's a bit of good news that accompanied the newspaper's passing. Toward the end of the Gatehouse era. the Globe Miami Times emerged as a locally owned  monthly publication with a vibrant social media presence, a website with updates,  and a popular annual tourism guide.

Late last week, the Times announced that it will publish a weekly edition,  a brave move that deserves community and advertiser support.