Features
2/4/15 – Visiting History: Yuma, AZ
Editor’s Note: Today’s blog is courtesy of SHRA researcher HannaLore Hein. All photo credits are hers. In December 2014, I was fortunate enough to visit Yuma, Arizona. To some people’s surprise, the city is actually known for many things and has a lot to offer both tourists and locals alike. Located in the southwest corner of… Read the Rest »
1/16/15 – Favorite Reading Rooms: Hornig Library
Editor’s Note: This week’s blog is by Naomi Heindel as part of our ongoing series on our favorite reading rooms. From the spacious reading room at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, we travel to a tiny library embedded deep within Dartmouth College’s physical science building. Many thanks to Kim Wind, Program Administrator, Environmental… Read the Rest »
12/22/14 – Happy Holidays from SHRA
SHRA is taking a blog hiatus for the next couple of weeks, but we will still be posting to Twitter and Facebook. Please join us at @pastforwardSHRA on Twitter or www.facebook.com/shraboise for some our favorite blog posts from the past, as well as interesting articles from around the web. We’ll be back with new content the week… Read the Rest »
12/19/14 – Unexpected Archive Treasures
Editor’s Note: Today’s post is courtesy of guest blogger Cheryl Oestreicher, Head, Special Collections, Boise State University As an archivist, I enjoy helping people with their research. It’s a mutually beneficial relationship, as I learn more about our collections from what researchers discover, and in turn I share my existing knowledge. Often, I’m able to… Read the Rest »
12/8/14 – FDR’s Court Packing Plan
In April 1937, Texas attorney Richard Burges wrote to his childhood friend Hillary Shewmaker expressing doubt over his vote for Franklin Roosevelt in the recent presidential election. On the heels of his landslide victory, Roosevelt announced proposed legislation to change the composition of the United States Supreme Court, a thinly veiled effort to “pack” the… Read the Rest »
11/14/14 – Neither Snow nor Rain nor Heat nor Gloom of Night…
Technology has almost entirely killed the old-fashioned letter, and, in the wake of its demise, the mainstay federal agency whose history helps us trace our own country’s social and cultural past has been crippled. This summer I came across a pile of letters I exchanged with my husband during our courtship. I remember waiting for the… Read the Rest »
10/24/14 – The Passenger Pigeon
September 2014 marked 100 years since the last passenger pigeon died in the Cincinnati zoo. These birds, which at one point made up 20% to 40% of the entire avian population of the United States, lived east of the Rocky Mountains, from central Canada in the north to the southern United States. It is estimated… Read the Rest »
10/3/14 – The Penniless Billionaire, a Legacy of Andrew Carnegie
Andrew Carnegie is famous for many things, not least of which were his many philanthropic ventures and the legacy of libraries he left across the entire United States. Recently, the British media have been carrying the story of Charles “Chuck” Feeney, an Irish-American billionaire who is making a similar effort to give away his entire… Read the Rest »
9/12/14 – From Clearcuts to Ecosystem Management: The Forest Service and the Environmental Movement
Editor’s note: This is the fourth installment in a blog series on the history of the national forests by SHRA environmental analyst/researcher Naomi Heindel. Links to the previous blogs in the series are here, here, and here. This installment examines the rise of the environmental movement, the Forest Service’s continued reliance on clearcutting, and the… Read the Rest »
8/29/14 – A Brief History of School Summer Vacation
As August draws to a close, most students across the U.S. are heading back to school. We previously looked at the origins of public schools in the U.S. , and SHRA delved into more education-related issues when we researched and wrote the 120-year history of the Idaho Education Association. Because most Americans are a product of… Read the Rest »