It is in the 1860s in Kanab where town leaders are struggling with the evils of the day.
Profanity.
Drunkenness.
Curfews.
In 2003, Rosemary Cundiff is documenting their battle at a desk in the State Archives warehouse facility in West Valley City.
Kanab, back then, passed ordinance after ordinance regulating societal ills such as horse racing, failure to observe the Sabbath, adultery, prostitution and liquor.
Cundiff works at a computer, writing summaries of the raucous history — a contentiousness that resurfaced 100 years later in a fight between the mayor and his City Council.
"It's the same battle, but a different time," muses Cundiff, who is completing just one step of an exhaustive process to record history.
Elsewhere, in a little rundown building behind the Capitol, micrographics manager Brian Carpenter is standing next to a large, clunky machine that is processing microfilm. Earlier, employees had taken pictures of books and scores of other documents, which are then preserved on the film for public access.
The elaborate caretaking of Utah's history will soon make history on its own — when most of its operations, now split between two places, are consolidated under one roof in a new building in downtown Salt Lake City.
A new facility is on a fast track to be designed, constructed and open in a little more than a year from now.
State Archives' new home — at a cost of $8 million — is one of just six state building projects approved in a conservative $64.6 million bonding package adopted by the 2003 Legislature.
Once completed, the new facility just south of the Rio Grande Depot on 400 West will provide State Archives the added efficiency of being able to concentrate the bulk of its workload under one roof.
"I think it is really an exciting time," said Camille Anthony, director of Administrative Services, which oversees the Archives Division.
"Even in the midst of financial difficulty, we have found a way to preserve an important function — the historical and cultural side of state government."
Telling a story
The Utah Division of State Archives is the state's caretaker of records — boxes upon boxes of records so diverse, so old and so new, the amount of paperwork is boggling.
It is an exercise in "building" history.
"Older records have a great interest to historians. They tell a story," says State Archives director Robert Woodhead.
Utah only hangs on to between 3 and 5 percent of the documents generated by government, but State Archives still incinerates between eight and 10 tons of records every month at Layton's waste disposal facility. Even with that disposal rate, each year the division gains between 3,000 and 4,000 cubic feet of boxes.
Preserving those documents can be tedious and tender, like the assignment Glen Fairclough was working on one recent morning.
A criminal affidavit, circa 1887, is under Fairclough's care. It's a document from Logan Justice Court charging a man with breaking and entering to take chattel — someone's property.
In the language of the day, the document accused the man of "feloniously and burglariously" entering someone's home to steal and carry away the goods.
Fairclough is using a brush to rid the aging documents of unwanted dust and other particles, then a boning press to straighten the folds.
For photos of older vintage, he uses gloves made of white cloth. It is not a work area where you will see a coffee cup or a can of soda pop.
The same strict protocol will continue in the new building, which will be a welcome development for employees. The facility is not considered a luxury but a necessity.
Permanent storage
The old building on Capitol Hill is scheduled for demolition as part of the Capitol renovation project; a heating plant will rise in its place.
So, the schedule is on a fast pace.
In mid-April, a selection committee met to hear presentations by more than a dozen firms vying to be the new midtown building's construction and general-contract manager. On April 25, an architectural firm was named to design the 40,000-square-foot building, which will also house the state History Department and Arts Council. Both firms are moving quickly on designs — coming up with plans to meet the needs for workflow and patrons who will use the services.
While the temporary storage of documents at the West Valley warehouse will continue, the new downtown location will serve as a much needed and much improved site for what's called "permanent" storage.
All government documents — whether minutes from City Council meetings or Gov. Mike Leavitt's correspondence and public policy papers — are on a retention schedule that determines how long they must be kept before they are destroyed, if ever.
Some documents, such as county assessor records, have "permanent" shelf life, stored in acid-free folders and placed into acid-free boxes. The boxes are then kept in a temperature- and humidity-controlled room.
With the division's move to the new building, permanent storage will move with them as well, into an atmosphere better suited to assure their continued existence.
Beyond that, all documents are microfilmed. Those meant to be kept forever also are recorded on film designed to last 500 years. They are then sequestered in a granite vault in Little Cottonwood Canyon leased by the state.
Never-ending task
At the main State Archives building on Capitol Hill, micrographics manager Carpenter oversees the never-ending job of making sure all documents are properly recorded on microfilm so they can be accessed by the public.
In one month alone, 33,000 feet of microfilm were processed. Last year, 7,000 rolls of microfilm were processed.
On this day, ledgers sit on a shelf waiting to be forever recorded. Some are dog-eared and all are very old. One contains mining records, from 1870 to 1875, from the little town of Ophir in Tooele County. Another has deeds from 1870 to 1873.
Although 20 similar books were completed in a three-week time frame, another stage of the project is waiting to be filmed.
It is a job, Carpenter admits, that is never finished. No matter how thoroughly, or how quickly everyone works, there is another chunk of history scheduled to arrive in boxes to await documentation.
In fact, Carpenter discourages his employees from trying to move too quickly.
"There may be a tendency to try to hurry, but I train them not to go too fast," he said. "It does not do any good to have a record where one page is missing because it wasn't filmed. This is something that is continual: We are going to be filming for decades."
E-mail: amyjoi@desnews.com