The Champaign County Newspaper Digitization Initiative at the Champaign County History Museum is within $2,500 of the goal to scan the St. Joseph Record from 1940 to 1962 and convert it to a researchable digital format. Once it is converted, it will be available free of charge on the Illinois Digital Newspaper Collection through the University of Illinois Library. https://idnc.library.illinois.edu/ Starting in December 1941, just after Pearl Harbor, Charles W. Dale, the editor of the...

Willie Nelson / Photographed by Dennis Garrel Forty years ago, on September 22nd, 1985, Champaign County hosted its largest concert at Memorial Stadium. Following the success of the Live Aid concert, Farm Aid sought to elevate the struggles of small family-owned farms, which were at the time competing with an expansive, increasingly corporate agricultural economy, and extensive droughts. Over 78,000 people gathered at Memorial Stadium to attend hte 14-hour-long concert featuring renowned...

By Rachel Mulick and Eva Grein The roots of the North End neighborhood go back as far as 1850 when census records documented the first...