Records pertaining to Utah projects of the New Deal resettlement agencies. Included are records from Price River, Green River, Elberta, Blue Bench, Ashley Valley, LaSal, Ivin's Bench, Price, and Midvale. The records were obtained from the National Archives.
Repository:
Utah State University. Special Collections and Archives Manuscript Collection
Merrill-Cazier Library Utah State University 3000 Old Main Hill Logan, UT 84322-3000 Phone: 435 797-2663 Fax: 435 797-2880 Email: scweb@usu.edu
Languages:
Material in English
Historical Note
During the Great Depression of the 1930s, the Federal Emergency Relief Administration dispensed federal funds to establish rural rehabilitation communities for farmers who had been displaced by the Depression to encourage the development of self-sustaining farm families.
One of the New Deal's most ambitious schemes for agricultural reform was the rural resettlement program. Four New Deal agencies - the Division of Subsistence Homesteads, the Federal Emergency Relief Administration, the Resettlement Administration, and the Farm Security Administration - participated in the effort. Thereunder, the government was to purchase submarginal farmland nationwide and resettle its inhabitants on viable farms. In Utah, the resettlement agencies proposed to buy 5,280 submarginal farms and resettle 1,200 farm families. In practice, the agencies permanently resettled fewer than fifty of the state's farm families, centering their activities in Widtsoe, a small town twenty miles north of Bryce Cannon. None of the projects proposed within this collection were ever implemented by the resettlement agencies. Nonetheless, the papers in this collection are valuable, for they reveal much about the nature of the New Deal resettlement program and about environmental, social, and economic conditions in southern eastern Utah during the Great Depression. It is fitting that these documents should be available at Utah State University since the university served as headquarters for the Resettlement Administration duding the 1930s
Content Description
This collection consists of two boxes of material, 21 folders, discussing the following projects of the New Deal resettlement agencies: Price River, Green River, Elberta, Blue Bench, Ashley Valley, Lasal, Ivin's Bench, Price Suburban Homesteads, and Midvale Suburban Homesteads. The entire collection is composed of photocopied documents, the originals being in Record Group 96 of the National Archives in Washington, D.C.
The original filing order system has been maintained to preserve the integrity of the collection. The somewhat hasty manner in which documents were filed says much about the hustle and bustle of the New Deal resettlement agencies. Working with the collection, one can sense the frustration that the massive bureaucracy and endless paperwork of New Deal government provoked. The collection is small enough that preserving the original filing order will not inhibit the researcher's ability to use the documents.
Use of the Collection
Restrictions on Access :
No restrictions on use, except: not available through interlibrary loan.
Restrictions on Use :
It is the responsibility of the researcher to obtain any necessary copyright clearances.
Permission to publish material from the Utah Resettlement Project must
be obtained from the Special Collections Manuscript Curator and/or the Special Collections
Department Head.
Preferred Citation :
Initial Citation:
Utah Resettlement Project USU_COLL MSS 146,
Box [ ]. Special Collections and Archives. Utah State University Merrill-Cazier Library. Logan, Utah.
Following Citations:USU_USU COLL 146,
USUSCA.
Administrative Information
Arrangement :
Documents are generally arranged by project. For the three major projects - Price River, Green River, and Elberta - documents are further divided into 0-1000-level papers just as they were filed by the Resettlement Administration.
Processing Note :
Processed in May of 2006
Acquisition Information :
Acquisition information is unknown.
Related Materials :
Additional sources of information: The best general work on the resettlement program is Paul K. Conkin, Tomorrow a New World: The New Deal Community Program (Ithaca, NY, 1959). (HD1761 .C66)
Brian Q. Cannon, "Remaking the Agrarian Dream: The New Deal's Rural Resettlement Program in Utah" (master's thesis, Utah State University, 1986), provides an overview of the Utah resettlement experience. Chapters 3 and 4 of that thesis extensively utilize the documents found in this collection.
Detailed Description of the Collection
"Price River Resettlement Project Report", 1936 July
78-page document discussing the location, physical features, social circumstances, and economy of the proposed project site, as well as photographs of the site. Also, a soils classification map of the project.
Regarding project funds, payroll, and proposed refinancing of the Price River Irrigation District by the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. The Resettlement Administration hoped that the RFC would refinance the irrigation district, because that would enable the RA to gracefully extricate itself from the region's economic morass.
Regarding the project's fate. Also, correspondence with the Soil Conservation Service regarding soil maps and reports of the project area. Also, general correspondence regarding project progress reports
