The issues we are still missing
This archive holds 212 issues, and it is not complete. Some gaps we can prove: when a school year holds issues 1, 2, 4 and 7, then 3, 5 and 6 were printed and are simply absent. Others we can only infer from where a year stops. And for four decades, nothing at all has surfaced.
If you have a copy in a basement, an attic, a scrapbook, or a box in a classroom closet, it belongs here. You do not need to part with it, and you do not need special equipment: we can build a complete, readable issue out of photographs of its pages and replace them with a proper scan later. Write to [email protected] to tell us what you have.
Fourteen volumes we have never seen
The oldest issue in this archive — The Bison - April 9, 1943 - Issue 6 — is marked Volume 15. A volume is one school year, so 14 years of this newspaper came and went before the earliest copy we hold. Not one page of them has surfaced.
If the count ran unbroken, Volume 1 would be the 1928–1929 school year. That is the latest the paper can have started: any year it skipped pushes the founding earlier still. Somewhere there may be a Volume 1, and nobody currently knows what it was called or what year it appeared.
The forty-year hole
Not one issue has surfaced from these 41 school years, from 1944–1945 through 1984–1985. The paper was publishing throughout — we simply have none of it. This is the archive's largest gap by far, and the one where a single donated box would change the most.
1944–451945–461946–471947–481948–491949–501950–511951–521952–531953–541954–551955–561956–571957–581958–591959–601960–611961–621962–631963–641964–651965–661966–671967–681968–691969–701970–711971–721972–731973–741974–751975–761976–771977–781978–791979–801980–811981–821982–831983–841984–85
School years with no printed issue
Nothing is missing from these years — no printed issue exists to find. They are listed so a gap on the shelf does not send anyone hunting for something that was never printed.
- 2002–2003 — no issue was printed.
- 2020–2021, 2021–2022, 2022–2023 — the paper published online only across these years, then returned to print. It has run online continuously alongside the printed edition since 2003, so the newspaper itself never paused.
A clue in the volume numbers
The last issue we hold before the gap, from 1943–1944, is marked Volume 16. The first one after it, from 1985–1986, is marked Volume 29. That leaves 12 volume numbers to cover 41 school years.
A volume is normally one school year, so those two numbers cannot both belong to an unbroken run. Either the paper printed in far fewer of those years than we might assume, or the count was restarted somewhere in the decades we cannot see. We do not know which.
If you turn up anything printed between 1944 and 1985, the volume number on the front page would help settle it.
Known missing issues
These are certain. The issue numbers printed on the copies we hold skip these, so they were published and we do not have them.
| School year | Missing | We hold |
|---|---|---|
| 1942–1943 | #1#2#3#4#5 | 1 issue #6 |
| 1985–1986 | #1#3 | 2 issues #2 #4 |
| 1986–1987 | #1#2 | 4 issues #3 #4 #5 #6 |
| 1987–1988 | #1#2#5 | 3 issues #3 #4 #6 |
| 1989–1990 | #2#6 | 5 issues #1 #3 #4 #5 #7 |
| 1992–1993 | #5 | 5 issues #1 #2 #3 #4 #6 |
| 1994–1995 | #4#5 | 5 issues #1 #2 #3 #6 #7 |
| 1995–1996 | #5 | 6 issues #1 #2 #3 #4 #6 #7 |
| 1996–1997 | #1#2 | 5 issues #3 #4 #5 #6 #7 |
| 1997–1998 | #5 | 8 issues #1 #2 #3 #4 #6 #7 #8 #9 |
| 1998–1999 | #2#5#6 | 4 issues #1 #3 #4 #7 |
| 2000–2001 | #1#6 | 5 issues #2 #3 #4 #5 #7 |
| 2001–2002 | #3 | 3 issues #1 #2 #4 |
Unknown territory
These years end early too, but nothing from that era says how long a school year's run was, so we cannot put numbers on what is missing. More issues were almost certainly printed after the ones we hold — we simply have no way to say how many.
- 1942–1943 — we hold #6, last dated April 9, 1943. Anything after that is unaccounted for.
- 1943–1944 — we hold #1, last dated February 14, 1944. Anything after that is unaccounted for.
Probably missing
These are estimates, not certainties. Each of these school years stops in April or early May, before the year was over, so the paper almost certainly published again. How many more depends on the era: through the 1990s the masthead states eight issues a school year, while the last Bison Stampede years ran to about six. The paper did not always reach its own target, which is why every number here carries a question mark.
| School year | Probably missing | Why we think so |
|---|---|---|
| 1985–1986 | #5?#6?#7?#8? | The last issue on file is dated January 31, 1986 — too early to be the year's send-off, with room for at least one more before summer. A year of this era ran to 8 issues. |
| 1987–1988 | #7?#8? | The last issue on file is dated April 1988 — too early to be the year's send-off, with room for at least one more before summer. A year of this era ran to 8 issues. |
| 1988–1989 | #7?#8? | The last issue on file is dated April 13, 1989 — too early to be the year's send-off, with room for at least one more before summer. A year of this era ran to 8 issues. |
| 1992–1993 | #7?#8? | The last issue on file is dated April 2, 1993 — too early to be the year's send-off, with room for at least one more before summer. A year of this era ran to 8 issues. |
| 1994–1995 | #8? | The last issue on file is dated May 5, 1995 — too early to be the year's send-off, with room for at least one more before summer. A year of this era ran to 8 issues. |
| 1999–2000 | #5?#6? | The last issue on file is dated April 11, 2000 — too early to be the year's send-off, with room for at least one more before summer. A year of this era ran to 6 issues. |
| 2001–2002 | #5?#6? | The last issue on file is dated April 2002 — too early to be the year's send-off, with room for at least one more before summer. A year of this era ran to 6 issues. |
Three ways to get an issue into the archive
- Send us photographs of the pages. This is the easiest, and it works. Lay the issue flat, photograph every page square-on in good light, and send them over. A photographed issue is transcribed, indexed, and searchable here exactly like a scanned one — the page images are simply replaced later if a better copy turns up. If a story runs across the fold, a photo of the open, flattened spread recovers words a scanner would clip.
- Send us a high-quality scan. If you have a flatbed scanner, 400 DPI or better is ideal. This is the best possible outcome and goes straight into the archive.
- Mail us the paper itself. We will scan it properly and return it in the same condition it arrived in. Nothing is trimmed, unbound, or written on. If you would rather it not travel, we can arrange to scan it locally.
Where to send an issue
The Hoofprintc/o Buffalo High School
877 Bison Blvd
Buffalo, MN 55313
Please email [email protected] before mailing so we know to watch for it — and so we can tell you whether that issue is one we are still missing.
Other things that help
- A single page, not a whole issue. We can slot it into an issue we already hold.
- Names. If you can identify an unsigned photo, or a byline we have spelled wrong, that is as valuable as paper.
- A memory of when the paper did not publish. Knowing a year skipped an issue is as useful as finding one.