We proudly present Progress 2026

By the time some of you pick up this newspaper  Wednesday afternoon, the office at the Chronicle will be locked up and we won’t be there. Why? A celebration will be taking place at a local restaurant.
That celebration is for a good cause. The 2026 Custer County Chronicle and Hill City Prevailer News Progress Editions are out the door. They are out of our lives. For another year, at least. The Progress Edition is truly a labor of love, but there should be an emphasis on the labor part of that phrase. The Progress Edition is a lot of work. And we mean a lot of work.
Within this issue is an extra 36 pages of content, all designed and telling you all about the progress and good things going on in Custer County. Whether it’s a new business, an expanding business or progress on infrastructure, you’ll read all about it within these pages. We cannot remember the last time the Progress Edition was this large. That means we had plenty of good news to share, and plenty of businesses supported our work through advertising.
The Progress Edition is a monumental task for our staff. Work began on this issue in early February. We planned which stories we would write about for the issue and began ad sales. Some people have a puzzled look on their face when you’re interviewing them in February and tell them the story will come out in mid-April, but we have to start on it in February or we would never get it done. There is just too much work to be done. The ad building starts immediately, and as the stories are completed they are put on the layout. Each and every person on staff is heavily involved, and on top of doing all of this we have to continue to focus on putting out a regular paper, putting out Down Country Roads magazine, etc. You get the idea—there isn’t a whole lot of down time between those initial planning meetings and the day we send the Progress Edition to the press.
We simply could not do this without the support of our advertisers. They are what makes the annual Progress Edition possible. Do us a big favor. If you like what you see in these pages, thank one of our advertisers for making it happen. Better yet, buy something at their business or support them how you can. The more advertising we have, the more great news we can bring you about all the exciting things going on in the county. We truly believe advertising in this issue is a value, as it is our biggest and best read issue.
A big thank you to our readers as well. Without readers, it ceases to exist.  The reason there is always progress to report is because this county is full of people who are always getting things done. There’s no better proof of that than the 36 pages of the Progress Edition.
We wonder if we are going to have to scrape for stories to put in this issue, but it is never the case. Custer is too vibrant and too active for that to be the case. There is always something going on, and there is always someone trying something new and exciting. You’ll find all that within these pages. We hope you enjoy the read.