Donald Macer Erb was born June 22, 1937, in Billings, Montana, and was raised on a farm at Huntley, Montana. He attended grade school and graduated from Huntley Project High School at Worden, Montana, in 1955. He entered Montana State University in the fall of 1955, and received the degree of Bachelor of Science in Agriculture with a major in General Agriculture in 1960. He returned to Huntley where he resumed farming and also continued graduate studies in soil science, receiving an MA in Soil Science from MSU in 1967. During his time as an undergraduate, Erb enrolled in Merrill G. Burlingame's History 310 course and submitted as his class project an edited manuscript originally prepared by the Huntley High School class of 1942 regarding the history of the area. Burlingame kept the paper, and in 1969 donated it to Special Collections.
"The History of the Huntley Project" is a typewritten 70 page manuscript which was originally composed by the "Current Projects Class" of the Huntley Project High School in 1942. The students involved with the project were directed by Mrs. L. Chistine Bliss Seamans, but the format of their finished work, as well as its present location, is unknown. The edited version created by Erb in 1959 divides the material into 13 chapters: Early Exploration and Settlement; The Construction of the Irrigation System and Opening of the Huntley Project; The Opening Ceremony; Provisions for Drawing and Filing on the Holdings and Development of the Project; Huntley Project Schools; Towns of the Huntley Project; Huntley; Ballentine; Worden; Pompey's Pillar; Early Organizations; The Sunnyside Library; Churches. A bibliography, which does not list any of the original oral interviews used to compile the work, is also included.
This collection is open for research.
An original manuscript, edited by Donald M. Erb, was donated to Special Collections by Merrill G. Burlingame, Bozeman, Montana, in 1969.
This collection was processed 2009 July 24