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Bill Gulick Papers, 1940-2008

Overview of the Collection

Creator
Gulick, Bill
Title
Bill Gulick Papers
Dates
1940-2008 (inclusive)
Quantity
51.88 linear feet, (46 record cartons, 3 flat boxes)
Collection Number
WCMss.046
Summary
The Bill Gulick Papers contains journals, correspondence, manuscripts, memorabilia, and research materials of the western author Bill Gulick.
Repository
Whitman College and Northwest Archives
Whitman College and Northwest Archives
Penrose Library, Room 130
345 Boyer Avenue
Walla Walla, WA
99362
Telephone: 5095275922
Fax: 5095264785
archives@whitman.edu
Access Restrictions

Collection is open for research with the following exceptions. Unpublished manuscript material from Bill Gulick's autobiography is restricted until 2028, and tapes 11A and 11B are restricted until 2020.

Languages
English
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Historical Note

Grover C. "Bill" Gulick was born on February 22, 1916, in Kansas City, Missouri. After a series of jobs during the Great Depression, in 1940 Gulick enrolled in the Professional Writing School at the University of Oklahoma. Soon after beginning his studies with Walter Stanley Campbell (who published under the name Stanley Vestal), Gulick was selling stories and regularly writing for national magazines, first for pulp westerns and then for literary magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post. Gulick began publishing traditional western novels in the 1950s, beginning with Bend of the Snake (1950). By the 1960s, he was focused on writing historical novels. Gulick's historical novels include a series about the Nez Perce (Northwest Destiny, 1988) and a series on the Columbia River (Roll On, Columbia, 1997-2008). Several of Gulick's stories were turned into major motion pictures, including Bend of the River (1952), Road to Denver (1955), and Hallelujah Trail (1965).

Gulick wrote and produced three historical outdoor dramas: The Magic Musket (1953), for the Washington Territory centennial; Pe-Wa-Oo-Yit (1955), for the centennial of the Walla Walla Treaty Council of 1855; and Trails West (1976-77), which represents events from the arrival of the Lewis and Clark Expedition in the Pacific Northwest in 1805 through the Walla Walla Treaty Council. Gulick also published seven non-fiction books about the land and history of the Northwest and an autobiography, Sixty-Four Years as a Writer (2006). Gulick's extensive body of literary work is characterized by a clear, dramatic narrative style and content that is informed by solid research.

Gulick's research brought him to Walla Walla and the library and archives at Whitman College in the late 1940s. Knowing that he wanted to write about the Northwest, Gulick and his wife, Jeanne Abbott, whom he married in 1946, moved to Walla Walla in 1949. Soon after they settled there, Gulick called Walla Walla a three-dimensional town—"one with a past, a present, and a future"—and it became the center of much of his life and work.

Gulick began donating his papers to the Whitman College and Northwest Archives in 1960, when Jeanne Gulick became the Pacific Northwest Librarian at the Penrose Library. In the decades that followed, Gulick continued to donate his journals, correspondence, manuscripts, and research materials to the archives. The Bill Gulick Papers document Gulick's long literary life—a career that began during the advent of the television and continued through the advent of the personal computer. Gulick is one of the most important interpreters of the history of the Northwest and his papers are an important part of the region's cultural record. Bill Gulick died on October 25, 2013.

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Content Description

The Bill Gulick Papers include journals, correspondence, manuscripts, memorabilia, and research materials. Included in the collection are papers presented to the Walla Walla Inquiry Club and records of the production of Trails West.

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Administrative Information

Acquisition Information

Donated to the Whitman College and Northwest Archives by Bill Gulick between 1960-2008. The accession numbers associated with this donation are retro-0039 and retro-0779.

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Detailed Description of the Collection

Names and SubjectsReturn to Top

William Huntington and Michael Paulus
2009

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

About Creative Commons Licenses in Archives West

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