Most people and organizations know of the Utah State Historical Records Advisory Board for its Archival Project Grants, a competitive grant program that provides up to $7,500 per project in funds to help preserve records and make them accessible to the public. This program has existed since 2007, and has led to USHRAB providing over $450,000 in funding to Utah’s communities to help them preserve their history.

Programs like the Archival Project Grant are emblematic of USHRAB’s organizational maturity and engaged board members, which have taken decades to develop. However, USHRAB’s history goes much further back, all the way to 1976. Documents held in Series 25195 – Grant program records, a single box of USHRAB records dating to the late 1970s, provide a glimpse of USHRAB’s earliest beginnings, starting with the creation of a new program for states by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC), the grant funding arm of the National Archives and Records Service (both established 1934). The records in this series consist of guidance documents from the NHPRC, correspondence between the Governor’s Office and the NHPRC, USHRAB’s first grant applications and evaluations, and reports prepared by USHRAB.

In November 1975, the National Archives and Records Administration’s Chairman James B Rhoads sent a letter to Governor Calvin Rampton requesting that he appoint a State Historical Records Coordinator and members of a State Historical Records Advisory Board as part of a new program to establish boards of archives experts in each state to act as an arm of the NHPRC and advise on disbursing federal funding to archival organizations.

Archival organizations in Utah would submit grant proposals to the Board, who would meet in person to review them. The Board would provide feedback to applicants to help them improve the quality of their application, and the application would ultimately be sent with a non-binding recommendation to the NHPRC to ultimately approve or deny the grant proposal. An April 21, 1978 a document from the NHPRC that was sent to State Archives included an example of the Massachusetts’ SHRAB’s grant program guidance document, which details the exact processes of their board’s operation and was intended to serve as a model for other states building their own SHRABs.

Modern USHRAB operates much differently; USHRAB applies for a programming grant from the NHPRC. USHRAB then runs its own regrant programs (the Archival Project Grants among them) in which organizations apply to USHRAB who has the final say in which projects are awarded funding.

Governor Rampton responded to Rhoads in January 1976 with a letter that included Utah’s nominations. He nominated T. Harold Jacobsen, the State Archivist, as the State Historical Records Coordinator and requested that the five member State Records Committee be constituted as members of this new advisory board. Additionally, he nominated two additional members to create a full seven member board. The nominees from the State Records Committee were men from these government agencies:

• Vernon B. Romney, Attorney General
• David S. Monsoon, State Auditor 
• Melvin T. Smith, Division of State History
• Clyde L. Miller, Lieutenant Governor/Secretary of State. 

The two additional nominees from non-government entities were:

• Dr. Milt Abrams, State History Board and Director of Libraries at Utah State University,
• Dr. Leonard Arrington, LDS Church Historian

To aid the Board in its mission to provide funding for preserving Utah’s archival documentary heritage, the Board issued a report in November 1977 that assessed the state of Utah’s archives, called Utah Archives: A Profile. This document provides a description of Utah’s public and private archives in operation during that time, organized by archive type: government archives, religious archives, and academic archives. After providing descriptions of the collection scope and holdings of these archives, the Board identified several weaknesses in Utah’s archives.

• Chronologically: Utah’s history was not well documented from 1930-1977
• Subjects: Urban, tourism, agriculture, business, aridity, energy, and non-LDS histories were neglected in the records
• Record types: More attention was needed in preserving photographs, business and financial records, county and other municipality records.
• Archival functions: More resources were needed to survey and process archival records.

Indeed, some of these conclusions continue to be ongoing needs for Utah’s repositories, which USHRAB’s current grants aim to help address. This report, along with others in this series, also provide some early mentions of a need for a regional repository system that would provide in-person access to government records at institutions other than just the State Archives in Salt Lake City. This was conceived of as a USHRAB project to help connect archival organizations and the public with direct access to records, which would later go on to become the Regional Repository Program.

Looking through this initial box of USHRAB historical records is part of a larger project to consolidate, rearrange, and describe the permanent USHRAB records in the State Archives collection in a manner that shows the evolution of this organization. These early USHRAB records show that the SHRABs in the late 1970s had a very close working relationship with the NHPRC during the nascent days of the state board program. The grant evaluations and correspondence show a concerted effort to work with Utah’s history and cultural heritage organizations to craft promising grant applications for much needed preservation projects. That legacy lives on in today’s USHRAB in the draft application feedback process, which helps level the grant writing playing field by helping small organizations who have never applied for a grant to compete with large institutions with extensive grant experience.