About Fort Lewis College and the Center of Southwest Studies:

(click here for additional general information about the Center)

Fort Lewis College has a distinctive history in the field of public liberal arts education.  For over one hundred years, it has been a first-string player in helping to educate Indian students (academically qualified Native Americans attend tuition-free).

Originally established as a military post at Pagosa Springs, Fort Lewis in 1879 was moved to Animas City, now north of Durango, Colorado.  The next year the garrison migrated sixteen miles southwest to a site on the La Plata River.  In 1892, the fort became an Indian boarding school.  After being sold to the state of Colorado in 1911, Fort Lewis evolved from a rural high school to a junior college (1933).  In 1956, the campus was removed to its present location overlooking the City of Durango, and six years later became a four-year liberal arts college.

The Center of Southwest Studies was established in 1964 to serve as a museum and a research facility and to develop an interdisciplinary Southwest curriculum (a separate Department of Southwest Studies was established in 1992).  The Southwest curriculum at Fort Lewis College draws from courses in anthropology, art, biology, literature, history, sociology, and other departments.  Southwest Studies departmental offerings include courses in oral history and archival theory and practice.  In 1990, the Colorado Commission on Higher Education recognized the Center of Southwest Studies as a program of excellence in state-funded higher education.

The Center's collections are cataloged along with Reed Library holdings in the College's TALON Public Access Catalog, searchable on the Web at http://opac.fortlewis.edu/screens/opacmenu.html .  The Center's holdings, which focus on the Four Corners region, include over 8,000 artifacts, about 15,000 volumes, numerous periodicals (listed in the Reed Library periodicals holdings printouts), and more than 500 special collections dating from prehistory to the present.  These include 5,00 linear shelf feet of manuscripts and unbound printed materials, over 7,000 rolls of microfilm (including about 3,000 rolls of historic Southwest region newspapers), over 600 oral histories, and more than 150,000 photographs.  Strengths in the Center's collections of artifacts (which, with Anthropology Department holdings, amount to more than 4,000 linear shelf feet of objects) include more than 2,000 Ancestral Puebloan ceramic vessels, 300 Navajo textiles, 140 items of Southwestern basketry, numerous military objects from the days of the old Fort Lewis, and about 200 pieces of antique photographic equipment.  Most of the materials in the Center's collections were donated, from more than 700 documented sources.  The collections are a resource for every member of the community and beyond. The Center's mission includes preserving and making accessible this resource for all who are interested in the history of our region.

About the guides to the Center's holdings:

The archival staff produces an  inventory to describe each collection at the Center.  The purpose of this tool is to serve as the most efficient and economical means of access to the voluminous holdings of the Center.  It is the most comprehensive description of each collection, and is the source of information for the collection level descriptions which are accessible on the online catalog by doing a call number search for coll .  Familiarity with these inventories will enable visiting researchers to maximize the use of their limited hours at the Center of Southwest Studies.  For information about requesting copies and doing research from afar, please visit this page: http://swcenter.fortlewis.edu/SpecialCollections.htm#Distance

Generally, the Center's inventories (including this one) describe collections that have been left largely in the arrangement they had when in daily use as active files. Inventories do not describe the arrangement or content of individual items; they are not catalogs or indexes (though most include an index to the container list). Even the most detailed guide will necessitate research to locate specific documents. This is but an aid to research.

These guides reflect the dynamic nature of the Center's processed manuscript and archival holdings.  Individually and collectively, the inventories show the degree of arrangement and description of the Center's holdings.  We update these inventories as resources permit us to describe collections at a level of greater detail.  Also, we regularly produce additional inventories as we arrange and describe more of our collections.  For more information, contact Todd Ellison, Archivist, Center of Southwest Studies, Fort Lewis College, 1000 Rim Drive, Durango, CO 81301-3999 or via email: archives@fortlewis.edu

The Center of Southwest Studies' World Wide Web site address is: http://swcenter.fortlewis.edu

The Fort Lewis College Center of Southwest Studies collection inventories are provided to inform interested parties about the nature and depth of the repository's collections.  They cannot serve as a substitute for a visit to the repository for those with substantial research interests in the collections.

These collections are located at the Center of Southwest Studies on the campus of Fort Lewis College.  Interested researchers should phone the archivist at 970/247-7126 or send electronic mail to the archivist at: archives@fortlewis.edu .   Click here to use our E-mail Reference Request Form.  The Center does not have a budget for outgoing long-distance phone calls to answer reference requests, so please provide an email address if you wish to receive a response from the Center.

Guides to the collections at the Center of Southwest Studies

Information for doing research at the Center of Southwest Studies

Center of Southwest Studies