Archives West Finding Aid

The Ward Jay Roylance papers (1873-1993) are centered around Roylance (1920-1993), his family, and environmental issues. Included are publications, correspondence, writings, family histories, programs, tour maps and guide books, certificates, scrapbooks, notes, journals, biographies, news articles, medical and U.S. Army records, pamphlets, and postcards. Correspondence, family history typescripts, and poems collected by Roylance, as well as writings and publications by Roylance on environmental issues, are located in box 1 and date from the 1950s to 1992. Roylance spent most of his life advocating the preservation of scenic Utah. He was a founding member of the Utah Travel Council and a member of the Utah Tourism Hall of Fame. Some of his publications include Utah! A Guide to the State (1982), The Enchanted Wilderness: A Red Rock Odyssey (1986), and Utah: The Incredible Land (1965). He also authored many pamphlets, school texts, slide shows, guide books, magazine articles, and videos. A list of Roylance's written and audio-visual works is located in box 1, folder 4. At the request of Ward Roylance, documents relating to his wife, Gloria (box 1, folder 2), were restricted until 21 January 2002. In addition to the publications in box 1, boxes 7-12 and 16 also contain publications and documents resulting from Roylance's interest in wilderness areas. Tour maps, guide books, and postcards Roylance collected during his travels around Europe and the United States are located in boxes 2-4 and date from the 1970s.

Roylance's personal and family materials are found throughout boxes 5-6. Correspondence between family members and others is located in boxes 5-10 and dates from 1905 to 1993. Roylance attended LDS Business College in the late 1930s, served in the U.S. Army from 1942 to 1946, and then attended the University of Utah from 1946-1953, receiving a B.S. in elementary education. Documents resulting from these activities, such as his U.S. Army records and scrapbook, journals, and high school and college records, are located in boxes 11-13 and date from 1933 to 1993. Materials pertaining to Roylance's family (dating from 1946 to 1987), including histories, funeral documents, biographies, notes, and correspondence, are located in boxes 14-15. In addition to the environmental materials already mentioned, box 16 also contains news clippings, notes, and Wayne County (Utah) resident information, among other documents.

Box seventeen contains materials that Roylance made use of in his production of filmstrips for classrooms. The box also contains The Enchanted Wilderness Magazine, a project of Roylance and his wife Gloria. In box eighteen are the list of films that Roylance made for the classroom as well as the narrations for those films. The last folder of box eighteen is a work of fiction concerning an incident that took place in Vietnam in 1954. The setting is Hanoi, during the French occupation of the country. Because the author was himself in Vietnam after World War II and had met Ho Chi Minh, the story has the flavor of someone who was well acquainted with this subject.