GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY OF YUMA ARIZONA P.O. Box 2905 Yuma, AZ 85366-2905

History of the Yuma Newspapers

On Monday, July 30, 2001, the Yuma newspaper not only changed its delivery to a morning paper, it changed its name. With the permission of John Vaughn of The Sun , the following is reprinted from the July 29, 2001 paper.

The Yuma Daily Sun traces its heritage through two newspapers, The Arizona Sentinel and The Morning Sun. The two papers merged in 1935 to become The Yuma Daily Sun.

Yuma Examiner Sentinel

1872 -- Founder and owner, C.L. Minor, published the first weekly issue of The Arizona Sentinel in what was then called Arizona City with 1,200 residents.

1873 -- Arizona City was renamed Yuma, the The Arizona Sentinel name was retained.

1895 -- According to a 1996 Sun Centennial Special edition, in an article written by Yuma historian Frank Love, The Sentinel had survived competition from several upstart newspapers including The Yuma Times, The Free Press, The Expositor and The Republican. Another competitor, The Yuma Bee, founded in this year also did not survive.
1915 -- The Sentinel merged with two competing newspapers, The Yuma Examiner and Yuma Southwest.
1920 -- The Sentinel became a semi-weekly newspaper.
1921 -- The Sentinel became a daily paper but three years later reverted to a semi-weekly publishing schedule again.
1924 -- The Sentinel merged with The Yuma Valley News and became the Examiner Sentinel.
1925 -- The newspaper name was shortened to The Yuma Examiner.
1926 -- The name changed again, this time to The Yuma Examiner and Arizona Sentinel.
1928 -- The Yuma Examiner and The Arizona Sentinel separated and The Sentinel became a daily paper.
1932-1935 -- Sometime in those years The Sentinel was sold to J.F.Gayle. Heading into the Great Depression, the newspaper was facing stiff competition from The Morning Sun.
1935 -- The Sentinel Examiner merged with The Yuma Morning Sun.

The Sun
1895 -- According to an undated Yuma Morning Sun advertising supplement published around 1930, The Morning Sun weekly newspaper was founded in that year by C. L. Brown and W. O. Huson, a firm of Yuma attorneys.
1896 -- The Sun was taken over by Mulford Winsor, Sr., originally from Kansas but more recently from Prescott. Winsor had been employed with The Sentinel but as a result of a disagreement with Sentinel Publisher John W. Dorrington, he quit to found The Morning Sun with C.L. Brown. The newspaper was a weekly serving a Yuma area population of about 1,600 people. The paper was sold to J.E. Devine during Winsor’s tenure but he repurchased it in 1904.
1905 -- The Morning Sun became a daily newspaper and was advertised as "Yuma’s First Daily Newspaper".
1909 -- Kentucky Judge J. H. Westover bought the Morning Sun from A.M. Foster.