INTRODUCTION
BUREAU OF RECLAMATION HISTORY PROGRAM
Reclamation established its history program in 1988 and is focusing its energy on several activities.
ORAL HISTORYOral history has been strongly supported by Reclamation's management and is the senior historian's number one priority. About 200 people have been interviewed in the oral history program.
The intent of the oral history activity is to preserve information about Reclamation that would not normally appear in Reclamation's official records. As one staff member who has read several of the interviews recently commented: "This personalizes the agency and shows the people who make it work."
One research design has been implemented for the Newlands Project in the area of Fallon, Nevada. One oral historian has interviewed about 100 people and expects to interview about 20 additional people. The objective is an all-around look at the Newlands Project as a functioning Reclamation project within a community. The project was chosen because it is a small project with a wide diversity of issues -- including legal, water rights, environmental, Native American water rights, and even groundwater issues. This research design will not be repeated for other projects. Reclamation expects to refine the results of the program by development of research designs to assure coverage of all major topics important to Reclamation, e.g., construction, water conveyance, hydraulic laboratories, electric generation and transmission, etc.RECLAMATION PROJECT HISTORIES.
This research is intended to provide basic history background about each Reclamation project which can be used for such activities as environmental statement preparation, brief summaries for publications, briefing presentations, etc.
Once these narratives are in second draft, they are distributed to several Western American history repositories: the Water Resources Center Archives at the University of California at Berkeley, the Western History Collection of the Denver Public Library, the American Heritage Center of the University of Wyoming, the Newberry Library in Chicago, the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, the Beineke Library of Yale University, and the Secretary of the Interior's Library in Washington, D.C.
RESEARCH ASSISTANCE WITHIN AND OUTSIDE RECLAMATION
Reclamation's history program attempts to assist Reclamation and non-Reclamation researchers in efficient completion of research work. The experience of history program staff is provided regarding records, their location, and their uses. The senior historian also provides a history perspective to records management activities when consulted by the responsible offices within Reclamation.
In addition, professional meetings attended by historians interested in research on Reclamation history are routinely attended.
For more information about Reclamation's history program, please contact :
Brit A. Storey, Senior Historian
Land Resources Office, (84-53000)
Denver Federal Center
P. O. Box 25007
Denver, CO 80225-0007
Phone: (303) 445-2918
Fax: (720) 544-0639
E-Mail: bstorey@usbr.gov