The Iron County Miner will help celebrate Iron County Heritage Days — and the 140th anniversary of the newspaper — this weekend by hosting its first-ever Wayzgoose from 1-5 p.m. on Friday, July 25, 2025 at The Miner, which is located at 216 Copper St. in Hurley.
Iron County Miner Publisher Autumn Hill explained the term during a recent interview.
“We’re celebrating 140 years in business here in Hurley, Wisconsin. We were founded in 1885 — our county, Iron County, has a big Heritage Days Festival, and we’re going to be part of that this year. And there’s a parade and everything, and we are having a little party in our backyard just to celebrate our anniversary. A Wayzgoose is a long standing tradition in the printing world. It dates back to the 1600s — it’s a Dutch word, and it just means a party that a print shop owner would have for their employees,” Hill said.
The Miner printed Wayzgoose invitations on parchment using traditional ink and vintage wood type blocks on The Miner’s Heidelberg Windmill press, which was first introduced in 1914. The Miner also printed invitations digitally on its EnPress, a high-efficiency digital press introduced in 2018.
“We are deeply proud to carry on the legacy of the printers and publishers who came before us,” the invitation reads, “documenting the stories and history of Iron County with ink on paper. We celebrate the contributions of all our past and present employees whose dedication has kept this legacy alive.”
Refreshments, door prizes, printer’s trivia and historical photos will be on display during the July 25 event, which will take place in the backyard of The Miner.
Hill said in addition to the public, former employees will be invited to attend the Wayzgoose — along with local officials — to celebrate 140 years of the Iron County Miner in business.
“Honestly, I don’t know anything about other newspapers, but we’re lucky that we have this building here at 216 Copper Street,” Hill said when asked about the space where the celebration will take place.
“Our business has been located here since probably about the 1950s, and we’ve added on to it over the years as we’ve expanded too. We have a little backyard area — it’s kind of a grassy parking area, and we’re going to have all our festivities out there. We’re going to have photos on display from the history of The Miner — some of the early publishers and editors, all the way up to the present day, and then, candid photos of people that used to work here over the years,” Hill added.
Working to prepare historical photos for the event was not challenging, Hill said.
“I’m lucky that my co-worker, Jan Moore, who was part of the family that I bought the business from — she took the time, even before I got here, to archive a lot of the important photos and information,” Hill said. “It’s really special to be able to look through and see the faces of the publishers who have come before me, and especially some of the earliest ones.
“I hear stories about how they loaded up their printer and their type — their wood type — onto a covered wagon and brought it here to Hurley from back East — and that was the latest technology of the day,” Hill said. “That would be like us loading a super computer into the back of our van and driving it across the country to set up shop somewhere.”
The Miner is planning to display a few items from that time, too
“We have a piece of a proofing press and the photos, of course, and we have some of the type cabinets and we have a photo of three of our early publishers,” Hill said.
“One of the newspapers that was folded into ours was an Italian language newspaper called La Nostra Terra, which means ‘our land’ in Italian,” Hill said, explaining the photo of the three publishers. “They’re standing in front of the type cases, and they’re putting together the newspaper, and we still have those type cases. It’s really, really cool — it’s like walking in the footsteps of history up here.”
When asked whether The Miner has received plenty of accolades for being in business for 140 years, Hill said there have been challenges — and even paused when she became emotional explaining those challenges.
“The Postal Service is a big one,” Hill said. Hill was among Wisconsin weekly newspaper publishers who lodged complaints about the rural delivery of The Miner by US Postal Service in 2024.
“Of course, declining readership, declining interest in newspapers, is a challenge,” Hill said. “The fact that a lot of young people are reading their news on their devices is a challenge. But I’m hopeful that in the future, maybe trends will shift away from getting all of your information curated for you on your device and fed to you, somewhat from an advertising perspective, and people will have an interest again in critical thinking and reading their news from local sources that are reputable,” Hill added.
“There’s a lot of news that goes unreported because it’s just too small and local, and that’s our niche,” Hill said about The Miner. “We cover everything in Iron County, Wisconsin that we can fit onto our pages.”
The theme of the Iron County Heritage Festival Parade on July 26 — the day after the Wayzgoose — is Headlines Through History. The Miner will have a float in the parade, showcasing the community and celebrating The Miner’s 140-year history.
“We’re glad to still be here after 140 years,” Hill said, adding a thank you to the community. “We’re going to keep publishing the newspaper here in Hurley — no matter what obstacles we face.”
