The Johnstown Historical Society’s obligation to its community is to preserve, interpret, and protect Johnstown’s history. They accomplish that in various ways. About a year ago they took on the task of raising money to have the town’s longest running business – The Johnstown Breeze – digitized.
There’s no other written record or resource that compares to the vast and rich collection of local stories recorded in weekly doses by numerous successive owners of the newspapers, delivered each and every week for the past 122 years. The JHS’s goal for this project is to help connect its community with that history, and they’re well on their way to finishing what they’ve started.
Last September, they kicked off the project with a story in The Breeze and an exhibit at the Glenn A. Jones M.D. Memorial Library to bring awareness to this community resource that was established in 1904. The JHS is happy to report that generous donors stepped forward, and there are now several years of The Johnstown Breeze on Colorado Historic Newspapers Collection’s (CHNC’s) website: coloradohistoricnewspapers.org/.
A service of the Colorado State Library, the CHNC currently includes more than 8.4 million digitized pages, representing more than 1,035 individual newspaper titles published in Colorado from 1859 to 2025. New titles and issues are added on a regular basis, and the online database is free to the public. The digitization process generally takes about three months to complete once an order is placed and the papers are digitized and available online.
The current years of The Breeze available online are 1907-1910, 1928-1962, and within the next few weeks, it will include 2007-2010. The JHS chose not to go in consecutive order to allow time to investigate options for having some papers re-scanned prior to digitization, if desired, for better quality. They also applied for and received CHNC grant funding for the 2007-2010 batch.
By the end of this year The Johnstown Breeze newspapers from 1907 through 1973 and the years 2007-2010 will be available on CHNC’s website. That’s a total of 73 years and approximately 21,700 pages so far! The JHS owes this progress to its donors and the CHNC.
The Breeze donated the first $1,000 to kick off the project last year, followed by donations from the Milliken Historical Society and individuals in both Johnstown and Milliken.
Sharon Morgan, board president of the Milliken Historical Society (MHS), recognizes the importance of preserving the history of both communities. “If MHS can provide even a bit of financial assistance to a sister museum, we‘re willing to help them meet their goal,” she said. “It’s a step by step process because of the expense, but our board members are of the mindset to provide some support for Johnstown Historical Society’s much needed project.”
Other significant donors included Ardis Briggs-Tomlinson, who was a past Breeze owner; Billie DeLancey, Parish House Museum Director; and Patty York of Milliken, who is a devoted JHS fan and artifact donor.
The biggest surprise came when the JHS received an envelope in the mail from Cindy Sauer, formerly of Johnstown, that held a check for $15,000. This is likely the largest single donation from one donor that the JHS has received since its incorporation in 1988.
People give for different reasons. When asked of Cindy, what was it about the digitization project that inspired you to give such a sizable donation, she replied, “When I read about it (in The Breeze), I thought this is something that so many people can benefit from and learn the history of the Johnstown area, and I thought, ‘that’s a good use of the funds. “It touched me when I read what (the JHS) was doing, and I thought, why not? This is something I can do and help with.”
Cindy and her family also donated the land for the new Roosevelt High School. For Cindy, this family project is the most meaningful one of her philanthropic gifts. She feels both grateful and proud that she is able to pass along some of her good fortune in life to her community.
What makes her beam is when sitting in the RHS football stadium and looking out over the whole community, she feels grateful that she and her children were able to have a part in that progress., she said. She also has a soft spot in her heart for, and generously supports, the Colorado State University (CSU) football team as well as both men’s and women’s basketball.
Additional funding from CHNC through a grant the JHS applied for in February provided $3,750 in funding with a grant match of $750. The Colorado State Library had in their possession hard copies of The Breeze newspapers from 2007-2010 that remained in their inventory after the original Breeze newspapers were scanned back in the early 2000s. CHNC recommended the JHS have those papers digitized with the grant funding, so that all of The Breeze newspapers up to 2010 would be in a permanent electronic format.
Most recently, the JHS board of directors and the three employees took advantage of a challenge presented by Breeze co-owner Lesli Bangert. She and her husband and co-owner Matt Lubich personally offered to match a new collective donation from the JHS up to $1,000. The JHS achieved this goal and it adds $2,000 to the coffer collected so far this year.
We’re on a roll and looking forward to adding more papers through continued fundraising. The JHS would like to take this opportunity to extend an invitation to the Johnstown/Milliken community to join them in this effort to reach their goal of having the remaining microfilmed reels digitized and made available to anyone in the world for free. They’re more than halfway there, and no donation is too small.
For more of Johnstown’s history, come to the Historic Parish House and Museum to see new artifacts being added regularly. The Parish House, located at 701 Charlotte St., is open on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays from 9 am to 12 pm and by appointment.
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This post was an article written by our Museum Director, Billie DeLancey, originally published in The Johnstown Breeze on July 30, 2026. Keep an eye on the paper for the newest stories shaping our community.