The paper was co-founded by Frank Kathman as publisher, Laurence Kee as Managing Editor, and Michael Carlson (now Harman) as Art Director.

They recruited Kee, who was a reporter for the Bellingham Herald, and the only one of the three with a steady paycheck, so it came down to him to write a check to the Lynden Tribune on March 17, 1969, to get the first issue printed.

Published in tabloid newspaper format and selling for 25 cents, it was a member of the Underground Press Syndicate and the Liberation News Service, and reported circulation of 6000 copies in 1972.

][citation needed][4] Though initially a kind of hippie paper focusing on the counterculture and ending the Vietnam War, under the leadership of Kathman and Kee, and later Chris Condon and others, it quickly became an important source of investigative journalism on political and environmental issues in Bellingham and the Pacific Northwest in general.

[citation needed] Although the editorial and reporting reach of the Passage extended out into the nation and the world, the paper nevertheless retained its local community feeling in Bellingham throughout its existence.