Melanie Sturgeon held up a small leather-bound book. The binding had seen better days. If she dropped the book, the pages would scatter like a deck of cards.
But Sturgeon is careful, even wearing gloves to protect the book. As books go, it was one of a kind. This was the diary of Phocion R. Way, a record of his travels through Arizona in 1858.
Way’s handwriting fills up page after page.
“He writes about the people in places he sees along the way,” said Sturgeon, director of the History and Archives Division.
The 149-year-old diary is just is one of thousands of original documents housed by Arizona State Archives. Like the other original documents, it is unfiltered history. Recognizing the value of preserving these documents, the Legislature created a separate Arizona History and Archives Division 70 years ago.
As then, the division remains part of the Arizona state library system — formally known as Arizona State Library, Archives and Public Records.
This month, the Arizona State Archives is tying the celebration of its 70th year to Arizona Archives Month.
That was kicked off with a 70th anniversary reception in the Capitol Museum’s Ice Cream Parlor on Oct. 3, attended by about 60 people. Future events include a film festival, a “haunted house” guide of the Capitol Museum and a state archives open house.
As it happens, official interest in historical documents predates the Legislature’s creation of the archives division in 1937. In 1909, when the Legislature established the Office of Territorial Historian, he traveled the state.
“His job was to go out and collect those documents,” Sturgeon said.
These days the state archivists do much the same thing, she added.
“We go out and visit with counties and cities. We work with agencies. We don’t just wait for records that might come here,” she said.
While collecting records still requires footwork, preserving the records has undergone a big change. That’s because — through experience and science — archivists know that old documents are best kept in cool, unlit rooms. So a fourth-floor storage room — part of the 1938 Capitol addition — is kept dark and off-limits to casual browsers. Staff fetch requested materials.
It wasn’t always so, archivist Nancy Sawyer said. Old photographs show visitors sitting around tables in that same room, poring through even older records. On the same tables — ashtrays stuffed with cigarette butts.
Those photographs themselves are now part of the archives.
That’s to “collect, preserve and make accessible the historical records of state and local governments,” Sawyer said.
But Arizona archivists and historians have long complained that the mission was being undermined by lack of space and outdated facilities. Even without the cigarette-puffing patrons, the fourth-floor room — now known as Arizona’s Attic — is proving a bad place to store aging documents. Temperature and humidity cannot be controlled.
That will change when the new Polly Rosenbaum Archives and History Building opens in September 2008. The fragile archives will be in the newest settings.
“For the very first time they will be in the optimal temperature and humidity controls we know they need to be in to be around for hundreds of years,” Sturgeon said.