For the first time ever, thousands of high-quality archival materials – photographs, documents and correspondence – chronicling the early history of Grand Canyon National Park (1890-1940) have been made digitally available to the public through a partnership between ASU Library, Northern Arizona University’s Cline Library and Grand Canyon National Park.
Coined 100 Years of Grand, the project commemorates the upcoming centennial of the legislative creation of Grand Canyon National Park in February 1919 and aims to enhance public understanding of the park’s history by weaving together several decades of cultural, geospatial, entrepreneurial, documentary and administrative archival history.
“Materials made accessible through this project will be of benefit to visitors to the park who may want to enhance their experience and historical understanding of the Grand Canyon,” said Rob Spindler, university archivist for ASU and the project’s director. “Students, teachers and historians at all educational levels will be able to acquire and reuse these materials for class lectures, assignments and related writings and research. Arizona businesses that rely on Grand Canyon tourism will also be able to use these materials in the development of their advertisement and marketing efforts.”
The archival materials – photographs, documents, ephemera, maps, correspondence and original manuscripts – have been digitized, presented and delivered via three Arizona repositories.
“The public can gain access to the materials through various ways, but the easiest would be through lib.asu.edu/Grand100,” Spindler said. “Many of the materials in the digital repositories have rarely been seen since they were created. These amazing artifacts tell a bigger story about Grand Canyon National Park.”
This project is supported by the Arizona State Library, Archives & Public Records, a division of the Secretary of State, with federal funds from the Institute for Museum and Library Services.