View XML QR Code

Fred H. Hutchison Papers, 1925-1999

Overview of the Collection

Title
Fred H. Hutchison Papers
Dates
1925-1999 (inclusive)
(bulk)
Quantity
21 linear feet, (31 boxes)
Collection Number
MSS 124
Summary
Papers of Fred H. Hutchison concerning his time as Idaho Senator Frank Church's legislative assistant on environmental issues and as head of the consulting firm Fred H. Hutchison & Co.
Repository
Boise State University Library, Special Collections and Archives
Special Collections and Archives
1910 University Drive
Boise ID
83725
Telephone: 2084263990
archives@boisestate.edu
Access Restrictions

Collection is available for research.

Languages
English
Sponsor
Funding for encoding this finding aid was provided, in part, by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities
Return to Top

Historical Note

Fred H. Hutchinson was born in 1953 and grew up in Jefferson County, Idaho. He first worked for Senator Church as a college intern in 1974 and 1975 while attending the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). In June 1975 he was hired as a staff member and worked for the Senator until Church left office in 1980. Fred Hutchison created a consulting firm, Fred H. Hutchison & Co., in 1981. He donated his collection of papers from his time as Frank Church's legislative assistant for environmental issues to Boise State University in 1993. An additional donation of papers related to the work of Fred H. Hutchison & Co. was donated in 2008.

Return to Top

Content Description

This collection was compiled by Fred H. Hutchison, who served in the late 1970s as Senator Frank Church's legislative assistant for environmental issues. Series one through fourteen and series thirty-one comprise Mr. Hutchison's working files as a member of Church's staff in Washington, D.C. and include correspondence (both of Church and Hutchison), legislation, press releases, position papers, studies, and reference material relating to wilderness legislation, Hells Canyon, the Sawtooth Mountains, River of No Return, forest management, fish and wildlife, public lands, the Sagebrush Rebellion, and other environmental issues. Much of the collection is in photocopy form; they are copies of originals from the Senator's general office files that Hutchison copied for his own use. Many of those copies predate Hutchison's work with Senator Church; he made copies for his own working files to trace the background of issues and Church's positions over time. During his entire 24 years in the Senate, Frank Church sat on the Interior Committee and dealt with environmental issues and the management of public lands. Hutchison's files offer an historical perspective of environmental matters that the committee confronted from 1956 through 1980.

Frank Church was an advocate for the protection of the environment but believed he was accountable to the people of Idaho whom he represented. Throughout his career, he sought a balance between what should be preserved and what should be utilized to make Idaho a good place to live for present and future generations. An examination of these papers provides the researcher insights to the Senator's thinking and the issues he faced.

Series fourteen through thirty reflect Fred Hutchison's consulting firm, F.H. Hutchison & Co., which was formed in 1981 after Frank Church left office. F.H.H. & Co. provided services to corporations, trade associations, and individuals that interacted with the Congressional and Executive Branches of the United States government. Building upon his experience working for Senator Church, Fred Hutchison and his firm worked with logging companies and sawmill operators to push for environmental legislation that would benefit both the public at large and the businesses that citizens rely upon for services and jobs. Among a variety of other companies, Fred H. Hutchison & Co. also provided services to geothermal energy projects and private individuals such as James P. Purvis, who finally recovered his personal expenses from a 1962 World's Fair construction contract after 25 years of litigation.

The papers of Fred H. Hutchison & Co. from the 1980s and 1990s provide an invaluable insight into issues of environmental conservation and use of resources from the perspective of the businesses that balance environmental concerns with the concerns of providing services and employment opportunities in the face of constantly shifting legislation and public opinion. The papers also include a variety of primary source materials for the city of Boise, Idaho's geothermal energy projects and research materials relating to other geothermal energy projects across the United States.

Return to Top

Use of the Collection

Preferred Citation

[item description], Fred H. Hutchison Papers, Box [number] Folder [number], Boise State University Special Collections and Archives.

Return to Top

Administrative Information

Arrangement

The collection is arranged into thirty-one series. Series one through fourteen and series thirty-one reflect Mr. Hutchison's work for Senator Fred Church through 1980. Series fifteen through thirty reflect the work of the F.H. Hutchison & Co. consulting firm beginning in 1981.

Acquisition Information

Donated by Fred Hutchison, 1993 and 2008.

Processing Note

Wherever possible, the collection was kept in Fred Hutchison's original order. The titles of formerly-bound folders are noted in the folder name. Metal bindings were removed to due to rust concerns. Additionally, many pages of the minutes contain newspaper clippings, which were fading and creating acid damage to adjacent pages. These pages were photocopied for preservation purposes. The files of the second accession, series fifteen through thirty, almost entirely reflect Fred Hutchison's folder descriptions and original series order. However, about 15% of the material in the second accession contained loose items, which were fit into Hutchison's pre-determined higher-level organization schema as closely as possible. In the case of the second accession, series which contained only one or two files were collated into Series 29, Miscellaneous Items.

Separated Materials

Pages which contained acidic and faded newspaper clippings were photocopied and the original pages discarded. A small number of duplicates were also discarded. In the case of the second accession (dated 1981 and later), some published reports from the United States Congress and other governmental agencies were removed into the book library of Special Collections.

Related Materials

See also:

Frank Church Papers

Carl Burke Papers

LeRoy Ashby and Rod Gramer Collection on Frank Church

Return to Top

Detailed Description of the Collection

Collection processed by Mary Carter, assisted by Erika Black; revised by Kent Randell
1993

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

About Creative Commons Licenses in Archives West