Yellowstone Journal

Published in Miles City, beginning on July 24, 1879, The Yellowstone Journal (weekly) represents the first newspaper established in eastern Montana, only three years after Custer’s demise at Little Bighorn and following upon the construction of Fort Keogh by Colonel Nelson Miles.  From its beginnings as Miles Town in 1877, the military and later the cattle industry dominated the town, and Custer County’s first newspaper reflected those interests.  The Journal’s first editor and owner, Major [[Thompson P. McElrath]], a veteran of the Civil War and son of the New York Tribune owner and assistant editor of  both the Philadelphia Evening Journal and the New York Weekly Century, relocated to Miles City, Montana in May 1879 for his health.  McElrath had a financial interest in promoting the fledgling town, appointed the U.S. Land Office commissioner a year after his arrival and acquiring major real estate interests over time.  In January of 1880 W.D. Knight, a printer and pressman from the Black Hills appeared in Miles City, and by December 1881, he acquired an interest in the Weekly Journal, and on October 18, 1882, Knight began publishing the Daily Yellowstone Journal, a six column, 21.5 x 15 inch newspaper, with a declared Republican perspective. During those years the newspaper proclaimed themselves to be “the only newspaper between Bismarck, North Dakota and the Rocky Mountains.”

The paper existed as a '''weekly''' continuously from '79 to '01, and as a '''daily''' for most of the period from '82 to '93 (except for a pause spring/summer of '83.