USU Blanding Campus Offers Varied Classes While Saving Local History

By Janet Wilcox 

     Walter C. Lyman’s vision of Blanding becoming a lighthouse for education evolved and has proven true over the past 100 years. Today satellite classes are taught in Blanding but are also broadcast to Monument Valley, Cortez and Monticello. There are 30 campuses statewide. Thousands of students have benefited from this long-distance instruction. Several have also earned their Master’s degree in Blanding via long-distance from the USU campus in Logan.

          Nearly half of Blanding’s students are the first in their families to attend college. In addition to regular in class instruction, USU offers instruction in construction, welding, engineering, health and heavy equipment skills. Kumen Jones was the first superintendent of San Juan County schools in 1880-82, but there were only classes taught at Bluff fort. The first high school classes in Blanding were taught in the old Relief Society building which was close to where the Burtenshaw home is on Main Street. 

    In 1846 Albert R. Lyman built a one room school and furnished it with handmade desks in his effort to provide an education for Navajo students. (Issue 9 of Blue Mountain Shadows contains multiple articles related to education.) Education has changed dramatically since then in San Juan County. The USU Blanding campus library provides not onlybooks and classrooms but their staff has worked diligently with the San Juan County Historical Society to make interviews and historic photographs accessible to families. 

      There are over 20,000 photos in the USU collection! Several years ago, Ron McDonald and Corrine Royer each copied 5000 historical photos which have been converted to tifs and jpg files. The Mable and Phil Hurst collection includes 860 photos with more needing to be done. Whenever possible the history related to the photo is also provided as well as maiden names of women. All of this requires attention to details. Carol Brown also helped by providinginformation from “Family Search” related to the individuals in the photos.

      Besides photographs, the USU staff has also copied audio interviews and transcripts done by San Juan High students over 40 years ago. After students completed the interviews and typed them, they also got permission from those interviewed to share the information. Nearly 1100 of these interviews have been converted to pdf files. The San Juan County Historical Commission also provided 376 articles written by Walter C. Lyman. One rare tape in the collection is of Fred. W. Keller singing the Blue Mountain song. Heather Raisor and Ellen Kyles are key experts in this project which was begun 3 years ago. For 2 years they have also been copying audio tapes and including background information about those interviewed. The project will take at least 3 more years and then hopefully a website will be created with links to files that will be available online.