The UC Merced Library has been acquiring and digitizing significant primary sources that document the cultural, social, and environmental histories of the region, the development of parks and protected lands, and the Central Valley’s legacy of agriculture and labor.
The Sierra Nevada-Central Valley Archive at UC Merced Library focuses on the Central San Joaquin Valley and Sierra Nevada regions, which together represent the agricultural heartland of California and one of the most distinctive and biodiverse landscapes in the world.
Among the new acquisitions in the Sierra Nevada-Central Valley Archive is the Ralph H. Anderson Special Collection on Yosemite National Park and the American Southwest.
Anderson, who was born in Ohio in 1900, served as a Private in the U.S. Army and graduated from the Ohio State University, where he studied English, Botany, Psychology, Biology, and Spanish.
After an early stint working for the Forest Service in Prescott, Arizona, he accepted a permanent appointment with the National Park Service in 1930 as a Yosemite Park ranger, and later became the National Park Service's official photographer.
Anderson worked on many different types of photography for the Yosemite Museum, and made motion pictures of wildlife and other natural features of the park for use at the campfire programs. His personal collection of books, photographs, correspondence, and ephemera includes black and white photographs taken between 1925 and 1960.
The Anderson Collection joins the papers of the "Okie Folk poet" Wilma Elizabeth McDaniel; Ernest Lowe's photographs documenting farmworker communities and labor activism in the Valley; UC Cooperative Extension records chronicling the development of rural communities across California; maps, audiovisual and other archival material related to the Central and Southern Sierra Nevada; and the George Ballis Collection of over 31,000 images documenting migrant communities, the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee, and the United Farmworker Movement in the Central Valley.
The UC Merced Library is grateful to Anderson's family for the collection, which was given in recognition of his wife, Millie Lois Anderson, and daughter, Barbara Jean Anderson Kerr.
Given UC Merced's close collaborations with Yosemite National Park, the Anderson Collection will provide valuable historical documentation for students and researchers.
"These resources often flow out of the region, but to be able to keep them here for this region is very important. The library will be a base for very rich cultural collections," said Emily Lin, director of strategic initiatives, archives, and special collections at the library. "It's vital to us that people in the region have access to them."
In partnership with the Center for the Humanities, the UC Merced Library was awarded $750,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH), plus an additional $750,000 from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott's $20 million gift to UC Merced, to establish the Sierra Nevada-Central Valley Archive, a capital project that expands and retrofits existing facilities and will be a hub for students and researchers from around the world.
