After serving Caroline County for almost 100 years, the Caroline Progress has closed. Lakeway Publishers, Inc. purchased the paper in 2007. The William Diederich family had purchased the paper from Tribune Publishing in 2002, which had acquired the paper the year before from Chesapeake Publishing. Prior to being purchased by Chesapeake in 1993, the Caroline Progress was part of Atlantic’s newspaper holdings, which had bought the paper in 1978 from state Senator Paul Manns.

Manns owned Tidewater Weeklies Inc. from 1947-1978, which published King George Progress, Spotsylvania Times, Tidewater Review, and King George News, in addition to the Caroline Progress, according to the Library of Virginia. Caroline County has also been home to the Caroline Courier, the Caroline Echo, the Caroline Promoter, the Caroline Advance, the Caroline News and the Caroline Sentinel, the Library of Virginia has reported. All of these Caroline County newspapers came and went before the Caroline Progress arrived in 1919.

According to historian Lester Cappon, Caroline County was without a local paper from 1909 until 1919. In addition to the newspaper, the Caroline Progress has published Caroline Magazine and an annual Caroline County phone book.

The first edition of The Caroline Progress was published Sept. 5, 1919. The last edition of the weekly was published March 29, 2018.