FINAL GUIDE to the HISTORICAL RECORDS COLLECTION of the ROGUE RIVER NATIONAL FOREST (Medford, Oregon) (compiled and annotated by Jeff LaLande) November 2006 INTRODUCTION Scope and Purpose This Guide to the Historical Records Collection of the Rogue River National Forest, first compiled in 1978, has been updated semi-annually in order to facilitate the use of the Historical Records Collection as additional items have been accessioned into the Collection. This Final version of the Guide represents the Collection at the time (late 2006) that all of its original documents, maps, and photographs are being transferred to the care of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), at its facility in Seattle, Washington. The Collection has been formed under the directives of Forest Service Manual (FSM) 1681; it consists of approximately 15 linear feet of Forest Service and Forest Service-related documents, maps, and photographs produced by, or otherwise concerning, the Crater (later Rogue River) National Forest. There are over 650 individually catalogued text- or map-based items, in addition to approximately 3,300 photographs. Many of the individually catalogued text-based items actually consist of numerous separate components (e.g., dated correspondence of different dates, multiple reports). These records represent a wide variety of the many aspects of past national forest management. The documents range from early timber resource inventories and homestead examinations to relatively recent land exchange files and recreation reports. The maps include Forest visitor maps as well as resource-inventory maps that were generated for agency use. The 1 photographs cover a wide range of people, places, things, activities, and events associated with the Forest. Although many of the items in the Rogue River National Forest Historical Records Collection (RRNF-HRC) date from 1907 through 1960,1 it was kept current with many (potentially) historically most-useful and interesting Forest publications, correspondence records, and photographs from 1960 through about 2005 (the Rogue River NF and the Siskiyou NF were combined into a single national forest in 2003) that were selected by the compiler. Many of the items in the RRNF-HRC had been removed long ago from their original context as part of the Forest's “in-house” official records (i.e., their archival provenance had been disrupted long ago) and thus, as a "special manuscripts"-variety of historic records collection, the Collection does not archivally reflect the daily or long-term management functions or administrative organization of the agency. Instead, the items in the RRNF-HRC (many of which had been stored for years--virtually forgotten--in various cabinets, closets, desk drawers and private memorabilia albums) have been arranged into a unique filing system that has proved efficient for the purpose of rapid identification and retrieval by the compiler and other researchers. Because of the wide variety of material (including a large number of documents prepared under the old Forest Service alphabetical filing system, as well as some items that do not easily fall under the present agency file-designation system), the current Forest Service numerical file designation system was not used to organize the Collection. This Final Guide provides an organized, annotated listing of each item (or of each group of very similar or closely related items that are grouped together for convenience as an individual item) in the RRNF-HRC. The intent of the Guide over the years has been to enable Forest Service personnel, historians, other specialists, and interested members of the general public to utilize the historical-research potential of the RRNF-HRC while it was under direct Forest Service control in Medford, so that a better understanding of the Forest's past and present would be gained. Many items in the Forest's Historical Records Collection have proven to be valuable primary sources – not only during the research and writing of cultural resource overviews, environmental 1 I.e., from the establishment of the Crater National Forest under the administration of the U.S. Forest Service (name changed to Rogue River National Forest in 1932), through the initial years of the region's post-war timber harvest boom. 2 histories, and site-specific cultural resource inventory/evaluation reports, but also when gathering historical data dealing with a wide variety of other resource issues and administrative policies. 2 With the Collection’s transfer to NARA’s Seattle facility, it is the compiler’s hope that the RRNF-HRC’s goal of research utility and accessibility will continue to be met over the long term, and that this Final Guide will continue to serve as a useful finding aid. The Filing System The Historical Records Collection is arranged alphabetically under major subject headings (Examples: B file = Maps; D file = Fire Management; G file = Recreation Management). Within each major subject file, many items are arranged generally chronologically by date of publication (but, in the case of later additions to the HRC, they are arranged by order of accession into the Collection over the past 20+ years since the initial compilation of the Collection and its Guide). In the Guide, most items are annotated with a brief description of their contents. Note: Each subject file (for example, B file and D file) contains separately accessioned/labeled items (e.g., B-30 and D-12). In addition, at the end of a subject file (i.e., A, B. C, etc.) most subject files also include a "catch-all" zero folder (e.g., C-0, G-0) of related and very recent correspondence, newspaper clippings, and other materials of potential historic interest that were not able to be accessioned prior to transfer to NARA, and thus were not given separate HRC item numbers. A certain amount of overlap between the topics of the various subject files was unavoidable. While some cross-referencing has been provided, the researcher should first review the entire Guide in order to become familiar with the total collection. For example, someone interested in the history of a certain recreation development would probably find most of the relevant items in the G file; however, the B, J, M and O files might also contain useful material. A number of items not included in the B-Maps subject file also contain maps; the Guide’s item- specific annotations will prove more helpful in finding such contents than simply relying on the 2 The Historical Records Collection does not include the Cultural Resource Job Files (on-going c.r. site inventories/evaluations accomplished under the mandate of Sections 106 and 110 of the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966), miscellaneous archaeological and historical reports, or the currently-active (generally post-1963) official Forest Service recrods that are held in the various sections of the Supervisor's Office and the Ranger Districts. The latter continue to be periodically reviewed prior to being assigned a retention period and sent for storage to NARA’s Federal Record Center in Seattle. 3 subject heading of the HRC’s alphabetically identified subject files. In addition, relevant Forest Service numerical file-system designations are given for most of the Collection's subject files. Local Availability of Photographs Digitization of the approximately 3,300 images in the RRNF-HRC’s photograph collection was completed by the Forest Service prior to the Collection’s transfer to NARA. The Forest Service is grateful to David Knutson, Stacy Lundgren, and particularly Lee Webb for their efforts on the digitization project. The resulting collection of digital images is stored in multiple complete sets of binder volumes containing CDs and DVDs (as well as “thumbnails” printed on paper); complete sets of these binder volumes are kept at the Rogue River – Siskiyou National Forest Supervisor’s Office, and at the Southern Oregon University’s Hannon Library in Ashland. (Note: At the time of this writing, the intent is for the Hannon Library, through grant funds, to facilitate over the course of the next few years, the scanning of much of, if not all of, the remaining RRNF-HRC [i.e., digitizing items other than the photographs], with the digitized items becoming accessible on-line through the Library’s Southern Oregon Digital Archive [SODA]. This will enable researchers to use much of the HRC – including both photographs and text-based items on-line -- without having to travel to NARA’s Seattle facility.) Local Availability of Text-Based Items During the period that it was held in the Forest’s Supervisor’s Office in Medford the Forest’s Historical Records Collection was open for use by Forest Service personnel, persons engaged in professional research, and interested members of the general public. Items from the RRNF-HRC did not loan-out and were not removed from the Recreation-Heritage Section office. Photocopying of text-based items by researchers was permitted, and requested photographs were printed by the Forest Service with the requesting party then paying for the print. With NARA now responsible for curation of the original Collection, that agency’s rules and policies will now apply. However, researchers should note that in 2006 the compiler selected a number of (what were judged to be the more broadly historically informative) text-based items from the Collection for photocopying. Those copies were then placed at two Jackson County, Oregon locations, as “partial HRC” reference files that would remain available locally: (a) at the Heritage Program files of the Rogue River – Siskiyou National Forest Supervisor’s Office (SO), and (b) at the Special Collections section of the Hannon Library, Southern Oregon University (where these particular 4 items will eventually be digitized and included in the Southern Oregon Digital Archive [SODA] for on-line availability). In some cases, duplicate originals (as opposed to photocopies) were placed in these local partial-HRC reference files.