Norman V. Hancock papers, 1776-1998

The collection contains the papers of Norman Hancock, Chief of Game Management in the Division of Wildlife Resources from 1958 to 1987. Before Hancock retired he began writing a history of the Utah Fish and Game Department entitled, Two Centuries of Utah’s Wildlife and its Management: a History of the Utah Department of Fish and Game. This collection consists of Norman Hancock’s research for this book and contains materials beneficial to anyone researching the history of environmental policy and the environmental history of Utah.

The files are organized into 13 boxes and divided in to three main sections: meeting minutes, research files, and binders ordered and labeled by Norman Hancock.

The meeting minutes section is ordered chronologically in 6 boxes, holding volume one through thirteen of the Division of Fish and Game Staff Meeting Minutes from 1957 to 1969 [with the exception of volume seven, which is missing] and the State of Utah Session Laws on Fish and Game from 1896 to 1925.

The research files contain Hancock’s source material concerning people and organizations who influenced the history of Utah Department of Fish and Game. This section is divided into four boxes and includes historical summaries of Utah wildlife, microcassette recorded interviews of Douglas Day (former Director of Wildlife Resources) and Al Randle (Game Manager from 1940 to 1945), as well a written interview on the history of the Department of Fish and Game with Lee Kay (1979). These folders were kept in the original order, with many of the original titles that Hancock used, though the processor added to some of the titles in order to make them more descriptive of the contents inside.

The last section includes the contents of eight binders that Hancock used for research materials. Like the research files, they contain notes and source material related to the Utah Department of Fish and Game, including interviews of Mike Gaufin (Chief of Game Management from 1946-1951), Floyd Newel (prior Fish and Game Department employee), Dale Jones and other members of the Fish and Game Department (now the Division of Wildlife Resources). Of additional interest, are some of Hancock’s original notes and sketches used in preparation for his master’s thesis in the Department of Wildlife Management at Utah State Agricultural College Logan, Utah (now Utah State University) It also contains some original notices of his thesis examination to his various professors at Utah State Agricultural College, particularly Professor J.B Low. These papers have been removed from the original binders (which were discarded) and placed in three archival boxes. The binder numbers and order were retained, though materials from a single binder may have been divided among several folders. The processor added the folder descriptions, using some of Hancock’s original labeling.