Idahoans seek knowledge in ‘Land of Boxes’

She’d been a very bad girl, but the consequences of her actions didn’t become apparent for decades.

As State Archivist Rod House tells the story, the woman called up in a panic in 2002: She was applying for a job in Seattle and a background check had flagged seven criminal counts from southeastern Idaho in 1969-70. She couldn’t remember what she’d done. Could he help clear up the mystery?

Within 15 minutes, archive staff located the old case files. Thirty some years ago she’d been caught skipping class. Her high school principal mentioned that to the county sheriff, who for some reason made a record of it. And the record was permanent.

“There’s some screwy stuff that follows you around,” said House, 59, who began working at the archive as a volunteer in 1997 and advanced to the top spot in 2009.

Cutting class isn’t something that normally qualifies for a permanent record — but when it does the State Archive is where it ends up.

“We’re the repository for all permanent state, city and county records in Idaho,” House said. “Those are records that have a continuing fiscal, administrative, legal, vital or long-term research value.”

The collection includes everything from birth, death and marriage certificates, to property tax rolls, certain court records, liquor license applications, irrigation district maps, mining records and cemetery plats.

Despite the variety, only 2 percent to 3 percent of all government records are permanent, House said. The rest are eventually destroyed according to each governing body’s records-retention schedule.

The archive also preserves a variety of historical documents, ranging from newspapers to old architectural blueprints to family Civil War albums. If someone wants to see the Idaho Constitution or the proclamation of statehood, the State Archive is where they can be found.

The collection includes the lawsuit that Lewiston filed challenging Clinton DeWitt Smith’s removal of the great seal and legislative papers to Boise in 1865.

“Even back then they realized you need records to have a government,” House said.

The archive receives dozens of requests per day from researchers, government agencies and the general public, he said.

A public area at the front of the building contains select material related to Idaho genealogy and Pacific Northwest history. Most records, however, are off-limits to browsing. People have to peruse a catalog that lists the available material then fill out a form requesting a specific folder.

“Often we don’t know why someone wants to see the material we have,” House said. “We can’t ask.”

People can volunteer, though. One researcher, for example, was writing a history of the Albion normal school. Another came in prior to Paul Ezra Rhoades’ execution, seeking information for some short biographical sketches of all the other prison inmates executed by the state.

“Since 2009, we’ve pulled almost a thousand cubic feet for different researchers,” House said. “We don’t have material on current inmates, but older prison records are some of the most highly accessed records we have.”

Gubernatorial records are equally popular, he said. The archive contains the papers from every Idaho governor except Cecil Andrus (who keeps his papers at Boise State University).

Often the focus of the research is highly specific, such as that of the Idaho lawmaker who has spent two years researching the life of Jackson (Diamondfield Jack) Davis.

Davis was a Twin Falls-area gunfighter who served time for murdering two Mormon sheepherders and later struck gold in Nevada. He was struck and killed by a taxi cab in Las Vegas in 1949.

The lawmaker “thinks he was there the day Davis died,” House said.

The archive uses a two-code system to keep track of all its records. One code identifies the box containing the records; the second identifies the location where the box is stored.

“We’re very fixated on where something is,” House said.

Records continue to be shipped to the archive by city and county clerks all the time, he said. The facility also “inherited” another 17,000 cubic feet of state records during the recent renovation of the Idaho Statehouse.

It’s a bit like Christmas when staffers check out what each box contains.

The “present” isn’t always something they want, though. They occasionally find old telephone books, coffee mugs and office decorations mixed in with the records. Just recently they rescued a former governor’s barbecue tongs.

Almost as often, though, they find something that brings history to life in unexpected ways — “goose-bump stuff,” House said.

For example, he once had an opportunity to examine several boxes of federal claims and warrants from the 1930s and ’40s.

At the time, such documents had to be signed by the president — so here were thousands of signatures of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

“The signature started out very bold, but by the time he died it was an illegible scrawl,” House said. “It was an indication of how his health deteriorated over time. We took samples to show that progression and destroyed the rest.”

As government agencies convert to electronic media, that personal touch is increasingly rare. Even maintaining access to the records is becoming a challenge, given the pace of technological change.

House has a box of obsolete electronic storage devices in his office that includes such “state of the art” technology as 8-track tapes, a 15-inch floppy drive from the Secretary of State’s Office, vinyl discs, rolls of magnetic tape and punch cards from the state’s first IBM computer.

“This is why electronic records scare me,” House said. “We don’t have the hardware for this. Stuff that was created 10 years ago, we can’t read now. We know we’re already losing material; we just don’t know what it is. Give me paper any time.”

After all, someone’s job may depend on it.

bspence@lmtribune.com(208) 791-9168