Archives West Finding Aid

Scope and Content: Contains correspondence, speeches and writings, notes, minutes, reports, conference and convention files, curriculum files, and subject files.

Ullman corresponded on a first-name basis with virtually every major geographer of his time. Because of his personal associations with geographers working in academic and public-service capacities, the General Correspondence series has been organized to provide the greatest degree of individual name control rather than corporate name control. However, cross-references have been liberally provided in cases where Ullman carried on a personal correspondence with an individual who also served (and occasionally wrote to Ullman) in corporate capacities.

Ullman's writings have been divided into two subseries -- Major Published Works (books, articles, reports) and Unpublished Works (manuscripts, press statements, speeches, reviews). For most of the published works the series Speeches and Writings contains preliminary typescripts, notes and references, final published versions and some reprinted versions. An extensively revised and corrected bibliography, compiled particularly to reflect the writings included in the accession, is in Folder 1/8.

Ullman's professional contacts with other geographers are reflected in part in the series Speeches and Writings by Other Authors, which includes books, monographs, articles and reprints inscribed to and/or annotated by Ullman. Noteworthy is Ullman's personal, extensively annotated copy of Hartshorne's The Nature of Geography (Folders 49/7-8).

Subject Files include research materials pertaining to cities and outposts (Folders 74/1-2)), a project on which Ullman was working at the time of his death. The Subject Files also include a collection of railroad memorabilia (Box 78), which incorporates timetables and route maps. A comparison of these memorabilia with the most important of the accession's series (Amtrak Board of Directors, Boxes 86-102), documenting Ullman's work in corporate capacities, is instructive, as it provides an historical overview of rail passenger transportation then and now.

Complete biographical information concerning Ullman may be found in Folders 1/1-16 and 72/1. Of particular interest is a 1971 letter from Ullman to Robert B. McNee, Folder 1/12, in which Ullman provided a particularly telling autobiographical sketch.