The Southern Illinoisan

One of Newspapers.com's newest additions is the full run of the Southern Illinoisan, a paper based in Carbondale, Illinois. Between the Southern Illinoisan and its predecessor, the Free Press, Newspapers.com's collection of the two papers currently documents 80 years of southern Illinois history, from 1899 to 1980.

Carbondale, founded in 1852, was a railroad town for much of its history, until the 1940s when the presence of Southern Illinois University came to dominate the city's economy. Located in a region of Illinois known as "Little Egypt," Carbondale was called the "Athens of Egypt" because it was considered the intellectual center of the area. With a population of 2,000 in 1880, by 1980 Carbondale had grown to more than 26,000 people.

The Free Press (which alternated between the titles Carbondale Free Press and the Daily Free Press) was the city's paper until...Continue Reading