Publication of a newspaper dedicated to the interests of Belle Plaine and southern Benton County ceased at the end of 2023.
The Belle Plaine Union had that name for the overwhelming majority of its life. The Blairstown Press and the Benton County Star merged into the South Benton Star-Press on February 13, 1969.
The two papers were combined into the Star Press Union as the calendar changed to 2009. A full history of the Union was printed in the final edition of the paper on December 31, 2008.
In August 2002, ownership of the paper changed from Gannett to the Gazette (under the Southeast Iowa Union). I did page design for it for a short while. However, its last edition was Christmas week.
Archives of the paper(s) and predecessors through 2016 are on two different Advantage Preservation sites. One is for Blairstown (1919-90) and one is for Belle Plaine (1866-2016) that also has the 1982-2008 Star-Press archives (an eight-year overlap for some reason). Weirdly, the latter also has six months of the Fontanelle Observer (July-December 1988), three months of the Preston Times (April-June 1993), and two weeks of the September 1972 Bedford Times-Press.