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Community Improvement Through Local History Project oral histories, 1966-1977

Overview of the Collection

Title
Community Improvement Through Local History Project oral histories
Dates
1966-1977 (inclusive)
Quantity
25 boxes, (12.5 linear feet)
Collection Number
UUS_MEDIA COLL MSS 6
Summary
Many, if not all of these tapes were produced as a part of the Community Improvement Through Local History Project funded by USU's Kellogg Quality of Rural Life Program in the 1970s. They consist largely of oral histories with people across the state of Utah.
Repository
Utah State University, Merrill-Cazier Library, Special Collections and Archives Division
Special Collections & Archives
Merrill-Cazier Library
Utah State University
Logan, UT
84322-3000
Telephone: 4357978248
Fax: 4357972880
scweb@usu.edu
Access Restrictions

No restrictions on use, except: not available through interlibrary loan.

Languages
English
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Biographical Note

The Community Improvement Through Local History Project was an initiative conceived by Charles S. Peterson of USU's Man and His Bread Museum (now independently run as the American West Heritage Center), History and Geography department head William F. Lye, and the Utah State Historical Society's Coordinator of Collections and Preservation, Jay M. Haymond. These men submitted the initial application for the project to USU's Kellogg Quality of Rural Life Program on September 17, 1973, for which they received a $10,000 grant. Later funding came from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The goals of the project were four-fold: (1) To more fully utilize local history as a resource by which the quality of rural life may be improved. (2) To involve rural people in identifying their local history and applying it in such a way as will enhance the quality of life. (3) To establish local organizations which will foster and facilitate the involvement of people and apply history to community needs on an ongoing basis (4) To train leaders in each target community in the methods by which local history is identified and applied.

Workshops, seminars, lectures, and, notably, an oral history program, were funded through the project. For more information on the Community Improvement Through Local History Project, see University Archives 14.6/5:17, Box 11, Folder 1.

While the collection covers a wide variety of topics, two of the best represented are Charles Redd and Carbon County.

Redd was born on May 8, 1889 in San Juan, Utah, where he learned about ranching from an early age. After attending the Brigham Young Academy in Provo, Redd became the manager of the La Sal Livestock Company, later known as Redd Ranches. In 1931 he married Annaley Naegle, with whom he fathered nine children. Meanwhile, Redd skillfully applied scientific knowledge to livestock breeding and range improvement, increasing the capacity of his rangeland as much as 10 times and earning the title "Man of the Year in Livestock" from Record Stockman Magazine in 1946. He served as a trustee for Utah State University, as Chairman of the Utah Water and Power Board, and as director of the Cowboy Hall of Fame, the Utah Historical Heritage Foundation, Utah Power and Light, and Amalgamated Sugar. He also served in the Utah State Legislature. Redd passed away in Provo in 1975.

The territorial legislature formed Carbon County from a part of Emery County in 1894. Mormon settlers came to the region in the 1870s founding communities in the Price River Valley like Price, Helper, Wellington, and East Carbon. While many of these early residents took up farming and ranching, coal became an important economic asset with the arrival of the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad in the 1880s. The coal boom brought many southern and eastern European, as well as Japanese laborers to Carbon County. Coal continues to play an important role in the county economy, as does the College of Eastern Utah, founded as Carbon college in 1937. CEU became a part of Utah State University system in 2010. The 2010 census showed Carbon County with a population of 21,403.

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Content Description

This collection contains cassettes and reels from various oral history projects and events likely connected to USU's Community Improvement Through Local History Project. The tapes were almost exclusively created in the 1970s or earlier, and many of the interviewees who talk about their early life experiences growing up in the West were born between the 1880s and 1920s. It is grouped into two series, one for each type of media. Within each series, the materials are sometimes further grouped into projects.

Series 1 of this collection contains cassette copies of oral histories on a wide variety of topics related to the American West, grouped by theme when possible. The first, "Kellogg Community Improvement Local History Project," consists of the tapes originally processed into Media Collection 6. Tapes for which a specific theme could be identified were filed under "Charles Redd Project," "Bicentennial Project," "Historical Survey of Myton, Roosevelt, Ouray, and Randlett," "Carbon County Project," and "Providence Project." Oral histories that were not conducted under a specific theme are categorized under the heading "Interviews."

Additional categories contain tapes documenting events. These were categorized into the following sections: "Barre Toelken Writers' Seminar," "Oral History Meeting in Salt Lake City," and "Séance with the Sundance Kid." The "Miscellaneous Tapes" section contains taped events that do not fit into any of the previous categories. Finally, "Church of the Firstborn," contains recorded religious services of the Church of the Firstborn, a sect of the Latter-day Saint movement that officially disbanded in the 1960s.

The section titled "Charles Dowd Tapes" includes dictated letters to Kerry Ross Boren from Charles Dowd in which Dowd talks about his early life living on a ranch in Utah. On tapes 372 and 374 Dowd recounts stories concerning the clash between Native Americans and white settlers in Heber City, Utah, and on tape 375 he describes a murder that took place and the subsequent confession by the perpetrator. The tapes were not organized when originally found, but an effort was made during processing to group them by topic.

Series 2 contains reel to reel recordings of additional oral histories. A few of the reels were copied onto cassettes in Series 1.

Many of these tapes have been transcribed, though these transcriptions were found filed away in several different places throughout Special Collections. To make locating these transcripts easier, a column was added in the finding aid which indicates where a transcript is filed, if one exists.

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Use of the Collection

Restrictions on Use

It is the responsibility of the researcher to obtain any necessary copyright clearances.

Permission to publish material from the Oral History collection must be obtained from the Special Collections Manuscript Curator and/or the Special Collections Department Head.

Preferred Citation

Initial Citation: Community Improvement Through Local History Project oral histories, USU_MEDIA COLL MSS 6, Series [ ], Box [ ], Tape/Reel [ ]. Special Collections and Archives. Utah State University Merrill-Cazier Library. Logan, Utah.

Following Citations: USU_MEDIA COLL MSS 6, USUSCA.

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Administrative Information

Arrangement

These materials are organized by media type and then project.

Processing Note

Processed in June of 2016

Acquisition Information

Many, if not all of these tapes were produced as a part of the Community Improvement Through Local History Project funded by USU's Kellogg Quality of Rural Life Program.

Tapes 1-92 in Series I constitute the body of tapes originally processed in Media Coll 6 as the "Kellogg Community Improvement Local History Project." The remainder of the tapes were discovered in the unprocessed manuscript backlog with no accompanying information to suggest their origin. However, some of the interviewees on the mystery tapes match up with those in a project report found in the University Archives (see University Archives 14.6/5:17, Box 11, Folder 1). For this reason, as well as the similarities in subject matter and labeling between these mystery tapes and those in the Community Improvement Through Local History Project, the manuscript curator decided the tapes should be housed together. These two groups of tapes were combined in 2016.

Related Materials

A number of these tapes have been transcribed. These transcipts are located in the item and file manuscripts, as well as the Dewey books. If a transcript exists, it is cross-referenced with the tape in the finding aid.

Separated Materials

Some of the tapes discovered with those found in the manuscript backlog were actually cassette copies of reel tapes from the NBRT collection. Those tapes were removed and placed at the end of the NBRT collection.

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Detailed Description of the Collection

Names and SubjectsReturn to Top

Subject Terms

  • Agriculture
  • Agriculture--Utah
  • Cache Valley
  • Dry farming--Utah.
  • Fronteir and pioneer life--Utah.
  • Home and Family
  • Indians of North America.
  • Logan
  • Medicine--Utah--Randolph--History.
  • Mormon money.
  • Mormonism (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints)
  • Oral Histories
  • Prohibition--Utah.
  • Railroads--Utah--Bear River--History.
  • Ranch life--Utah
  • Ranching--Utah.
  • Sheepherding.
  • Teton Dam Failure, Idaho, 1976.
  • Utah
  • Water rights--Utah--Bear River--History.

Geographical Names

  • Bear Lake Valley (Utah and Idaho)--History.
  • Cache Valley (Utah and Idaho)--History.
  • Carbon County (Utah)--History.
  • Heber City (Utah)--History.
  • Logan (Utah)--History.
  • Moab (Utah)--History.
  • Providence (Utah)--History.
  • Richmond (Utah)--History.
  • Twin Falls (Idaho)--History.

Form or Genre Terms

  • Interviews (Sound recordings)
  • Oral histories.

Finding aid/Register created by Melissa Anderson, Clint Pumphrey, Joanna Dobrowolska
2016

CC Attribution
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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