WPA History of Grazing records, 1680-1941

The files of the WPA History of Grazing were accessioned by the Special Collections and Archives department in February 1967 and October 1974 when a second portion, including virtually all of Chapter III, "The Westward Movement," was discovered in files otherwise devoted to Agricultural Experiment Station papers accessioned by University Archives.

Final processing has followed the pattern which we can assume to have been the Willison arrangement in December 1941. Individual state and general project materials have been filed separately. The different sections of the manuscript drafts are filed in the order that they were listed in the proposed outline as established in the circular of June 6, 1940. Though Willison had proposed to develop fourteen chapters for the final book, since the states submitted their individual histories based on the June 6, 1940 outline, he was compelled to put together the first drafts on a seven-chapter outline. *

The original order, numbering system, and section headings as outlined by the June 6, 1940 circular have been processed in the transfer from original folders. The collection is complete as it was transferred to the university with the exception of photographs from Kansas, Colorado, Nebraska, Texas, Washington, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Nevada, which have been transferred from the Manuscript Collection to the department's general photograph file where they comprise numbers A-0430 to A-0532.

*A close reading of the chapter contents shows that the expansion from seven to fourteen chapters was to be accomplished largely by subdivision of Chapter IV, "Boom Days on the Western Range, 1866-1886." All of the states, but especially Texas, submitted a major portion of their texts on this twenty-year period. The Texas history was to be almost exclusively used for Chapter IV, "The Mustang, Longhorn, and Merino," and Chapter VIII, "The Long Trail."