Vail in the 1980s can now be relived by locals online as ColoradoHistoricNewspapers.org. The newspaper is now searchable through the free website, which is a service of the Colorado State Library at: ColoradoHistoricNewspapers.org

The web site presently contains more than 600 newspapers published in Colorado from 1859 up to 2021.

The Vail Trail’s inclusion in ColoradoHistoricNewspapers.org collection has been a major focus of the Friends of the Vail Public Library group for the last decade, said Lori Barnes with the Vail Public Library. The group’s goal is to see the Vail Trail digitized and searchable through 2003.

Barnes said Friends of the Vail Public Library has been fundraising for years to see the project completed. “This is a big way that Friends of the Library dollars have been utilized over the years,” Barnes said this week.

The work has become more expensive as the paper grew — the final digitized edition of the Vail Trail currently available on ColoradoHistoricNewspapers.org is the July 24, 1992 edition, which is 91 pages.