Responding to the growing need of those planning to visit Amador County, the Amador Ledger Dispatch is launching a new Web site to provide visitor information to residents of the county and beyond.

Today, the Ledger Dispatch introduces a new Web site to Amador County and the world: www.amadorvisitor.com. This new Web site has a number of features and services for visitors in the area and includes a great deal of visitor information and entertainment news that has never been introduced on the Ledger Dispatch Web site or anywhere else.

"We first introduced the Ledger Dispatch Web site, www.ledger-dispatch.com, in January of 2002. We viewed this as a means to provide news and information to Amador County residents, people that have connections here and live out of the area and emergency information in times of need," said Jack Mitchell, Publisher of the Ledger Dispatch. "We never realized how successful our Web site would become."

Last month the Ledger Dispatch Web site had thousands of unique visitors, a trend that continues to grow. "I think our Web site is popular for several reasons," Mitchell said. "The emergency notifications are nice, but we are finding that as our archives grow, a number of people are using our site for research. When we added our classifieds online, a new group of users showed up and we started to see a lot of folks using us for entertainment."

Building on the success of www.ledger-dispatch.com, the Ledger Dispatch breaks with its latest offering www.amadorvisitor.com, which is actually the first multi-media platform attempted utilizing a Web site that is updated continually and backed by a quarterly printed publication of the same name.

"The new visitor and entertainment Web site places the latest information on shows, tours, events and things to do online. A lot of the information is driven from our weekly Highlights section which publishes every Friday," Mitchell said. "This is the only portion of the Ledger Dispatch we had not placed online. We coupled that information with our Panorama edition to build what I think will become a huge draw to tourists and local folks looking for entertainment."

The move to create a new Web site for visitors includes many new bells and whistles for both of the Ledger Dispatch-run Web sites. The addition of advertising offering people the opportunity to view the latest sales or offers in typical print advertising, with click-through capabilities linking to business Web sites throughout the county is an exciting new feature, Mitchell said.

"We can now take the advertising that has been in print, reproduce it online and offer customers the opportunity to get to various Web sites within Amador County," Mitchell said. "You can shop and tour the area stores from your computer."

Another addition is an online scanner, where people can listen in "live time" to the police, fire and emergency scanners of the county. The emergency notification system has always been something the Ledger Dispatch has been proud of, but new additions take this even further.

"We've partnered with HomeTown Radio, so you can listen to the local radio station while reading our local content. Now through the partnership with MyMotherLode.com, we offer scanners, local weather maps and road condition updates," Mitchell said. "We've really developed an incredible mix of materials and information that we believe will become a huge hit with our local citizens and for visitors.

"Our strength and focus will always be our dedication to our printed publications - the Ledger Dispatch and Amador Direct," Mitchell said. "Our strength is distribution. When you can take a printed publication and back your local Web sites, in this instance www.ledger-dispatch.com and www.amadorvisitor.com, you find that you become the information leader not only for locals but for people entering into our community. It is a very powerful combination."