Open to public research.
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Permission to publish material from the Aaron Parley Christiansen daybooks must be obtained from the
The papers in this collection were donated by J. Arbon Christensen. He wrote and broadcast each transcript for the radio station KVNU during the 1960s and 1970s. The papers were donated to USU on March 4, 1996, with the help of Milton Abrams, the former director of the Merrill Library.
Aaron Parley Christiansen daybooks, 1915-1921. (COLL MSS 94). Utah State University. Special Collections and Archives Department.
Christiansen was born July 17, 1889, in Ephraim, Utah, and died in Logan, Utah, in 1950. He began his career with the United States Forest Service in Nephi and, in 1939, transferred to the Cache National Forest. He was stationed in Logan, Utah, from this point until his death in 1950.
This collection consists of the soft-bound daybooks of Aaron Parley Christiansen. Christiansen was a career Forest Service ranger. These particular daybooks cover the period from 1915 to 1921 when Christiansen was an assistant forest ranger in the Uinta Forest. Stationed out of Nephi, Utah, the books contain a log of his work activities in the field and in the office. In essence, these records were a time card. The books contain an excellent account of the duties of a forest ranger in the early twentieth century.
While working in the Uinta National Forest, Christiansen was required to keep a daily log of his activities, and these books represent that record. Some of the subject matters that are mentioned in the books are timber sales, grazing leases, road building, fighting forest fires, and reseeding projects. Christiansen spent a great deal of his time in the field, primarily working out of the Salt Creek Ranger Station many of the entries were noted from the Salt Creek area. Of particular interest are the comments concerning Forest Service philosophy and of Christiansen's philosophy about conservation.
The books number fifteen in total and were turned in on a monthly basis to his supervisor. The words "examined by" followed by an initial appear throughout the books. The book, after being scrutinized, would be returned to Christiansen, many times he would then enter another month in to the book. This accounts for alternated months appearing in the same book.
Arrangement: chronological.