Jan 18, 2017 Digging into Utah mining history through the Kennecott Copper Corporation records

The Manuscripts Division of Special Collections is pleased to announce that it has been awarded a grant to arrange and preserve unprocessed materials from the Kennecott Copper Corporation records.  This grant was awarded by the Utah State Archives under the umbrella of the Utah State Historical Records Advisory Board.  Funding for the grant has been provided by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, which is the granting arm of the National Archives.

The Kennecott Copper Corporation Records were originally donated to the Marriott Library in the 1990s.  Throughout the years, the Manuscripts Division has processed and arranged a variety of materials from it, resulting in a total of 677 cartons, boxes and tubes of accessible records detailing the history of the corporation, which are currently available to the public.  Unfortunately, there are still 189 cartons of unprocessed materials consisting of hundreds of personnel records from the 1930s-1950s that need to be organized.

Processing these remaining cartons will provide complete access to invaluable records for the use of researchers and the local community in order to further advance the historical research of mining within the West and to assist individuals trying to make connections to their family history.  The personnel records held within this collection are especially fascinating because they document the numerous ethnic communities that have worked and lived in Utah.  They tell the stories of thousands of people who overtime have migrated to the state of Utah, ultimately changing its demographic composition significantly.

This grant funding allows the Manuscripts Division the ability to complete the organization and preservation of all the documents and to update the collection inventory, which will be available online to the public. The project should be completed in June of 2017.

For more information regarding this project, please contact Betsey Welland at 801-585-3076 or e-mail her at betsey.welland@utah.edu