[bk]

Newspapers.com (if you have an acct.) is an interesting resource. It does not represent all newspapers over all times. For instance, The Seattle Times is not included. Yet the Tacoma Tribune is... Attached is the initial search page with no restricting filters set, for the search: trailhead theft (no quotes) (So, all USA-areas, over all times, in all newspapers catalogued [by newspapers.com] ) The mini-USA map at top-right shows the distribution of hits. • Most [articles] are in Montana. • Then WA, and CA. A bit directly below the red map is the timeline of when hits appear. Article hit-counts grow from 1980 up to a peak about 2007 or so...and then decrease. Remember: • These are just frequency of articles written (just because newspapers were not in the mood to cover trailhead thefts during some era didn't mean they didn't occur). • Also, just in the newspapers covered by Newspapers.com, which is not all newspapers. The sort method chosen for the result-snippet shown below is the default, "Best Match"--interesting that they are all WA-state results that bubble up to the top. (Is it a lingo-locality thing?) [...also note, there are a lot of false flags in the results, like a page of newspaper that includes a handful of articles, and with one article mentioning "theft", like in the city; and a separate article somewhere else on the same page discussing "trailheads", in some non-theft way, like a description of a highlighted hike, or trail-maintenance news, etc. These pages would misleadingly increase the hit count.]

[bk]

1976: Excerpt from page 15 of the 1976 B-ham Herald:

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1979: Front-page (below-the-fold....bottom of the page) of a 1979 B-ham Herald:

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2021: A more recent front-page B-ham Herald article this past COVID summer (of 2021):

[how does one force a newline between images, w/o entering text?]

[timberghost]

Thanks for sharing

[zephyr]