I am trying to research the age/history of a home which was believed to be moved to it's current site from a mining town a few miles away.

Based off of Sandborn fire maps, it came to rest between 1898 and 1904. The home was remodeled within the last 5 years and we found early 1890's newspapers in the walls so we think it was built somewhere else and moved to the site. This was a fairly common occurrence in the time period.

Anyone have ideas on how to do more digging on the origin of the house itself?

Public Records Search for Deeds?

We've done that but the deeds do not list improvements to the real property, just ownership.

Have you checked with the local historical society? If its truly historic there should be photos of it and some of history documented.

My parents house was built in 1953 out of material from a house that was built in 1893. The only way we knew that is because the man who sold the house to us in 1968 was the man who dismantled the old house.

Unless there are former owners or family of former owners of old houses around or an historic home documented with photos and such, lots of history of those old places is simply lost.

Unfortunately we have. There's not many long term residents still living there, especially since we've owned it since 1955.

Is there a local paper, or has someone preserved the old editions of the local paper that used to be there? If so, you might find something on point in the paper sometime during the years that the house was moved. That probably would have been considered newsworthy in a small town paper back around the turn of the century.