Robert M. Utley and His Papers: A Historian of the American West in the Park Service

From Custer fan to chief historian

Robert Marshall Utley was born on October 31, 1929, in Bauxite, Arkansas, and grew up in Indiana. At 12 he became fascinated with General George Armstrong Custer after seeing the film They Died with Their Boots On. While an undergraduate at Purdue University, where he earned a bachelor's degree in history, he began working in 1947 as a seasonal ranger at Custer Battlefield National Monument — now Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument — and spent six summers there. He earned a master's in history from Indiana in 1952 with a thesis on the origins of the Custer legend, Custer and the Great Controversy.

He joined the Army in 1952, graduated with honors from Officer Candidate School, served as a tactical officer, and became a historian for the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon, leaving as a captain and working another year as a civilian. In 1956 he returned to the National Park Service as regional historian for the Southwest Region, and that year married Lucille Alvia Dorsey; they had three children and divorced in 1977.

In 1964 Utley became the Park Service's chief historian in Washington, where he played a key role in developing the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966. After a 1973 reorganization he succeeded Ernest A. Connally as director of the Office of Archeology and Historic Preservation, and also served as assistant director for park historic preservation and chief of the Cultural Resources Management Division.

A second career in writing

Utley retired from the Park Service in 1980 and that year married Melody Webb, also a Park Service historian; they had three children. He became the Frederick W. and Carrie S. Beinecke Senior Research Fellow in Western and Frontier History at Yale and devoted himself to research, writing, consulting and speaking, while for 16 years Webb's career took the couple to Lyndon B. Johnson National Historical Park and Grand Teton National Park.

He published 23 books on the American frontier, among them Billy the Kid: A Short and Violent Life, Sitting Bull: The Life and Times of an American Patriot, Geronimo and a two-volume history of the Texas Rangers, and a memoir, Custer and Me (2004). His honors included three honorary doctorates, the Department of the Interior's Distinguished Service Award, four Wrangler Awards and four Spur Awards, the Western History Association's Caughey Prize, the Society for Military History's Samuel Eliot Morison Award, and the Western Writers of America's Owen Wister Award and Hall of Fame; the Western History Association's annual Robert M. Utley Book Award bears his name. He died in Scottsdale, Arizona, on June 7, 2022, aged 92.

The collection

The Robert M. Utley Papers (collection HFCA 1645, Series XIV.F; 1.25 linear feet, 1932–1978, mostly 1956–1976) are part of the NPS History Collection at Harpers Ferry Center in West Virginia. They came from the NPS History Division in 1992, were processed by contractors in 2012 and updated in November 2024, and are open for research but not digitized.

They are copies of reports, memos, clippings and correspondence Utley gave to Barry Mackintosh, the Park Service's bureau historian from 1965 to 1999, for his history of the agency's response to the National Historic Preservation Act. They include reference copies of the act and Utley's report Cultural Preservation in Japan, Some Lessons for America, and cover preservation of historic structures in the Park Service and the organization of the bodies involved, including the Office of Archeology and Historic Preservation. Arranged by subject in three boxes, the files cover:

• the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation (1966–1968);
• correspondence about "Toward a New Preservation Ethic" (1974);
• the Historic Preservation Task Force (1956–1976) and the National Heritage Task Force (1977–1978);
• the historic structures inventory and handbook (1963) and a history of the Department of the Interior (1932–1976);
• a regional conference program on the preservation act (1967–1968) and a National Register report (1973–1974);
• an administrative history of the Office of Archeology and Historic Preservation (1962–1976);
• organizational management (1964–1975).

Related holdings include the NPS Oral History Collection, the papers of Verne E. Chatelain, Ronald F. Lee and Ernest A. Connally, the records of the Office of Archeology and Historic Preservation, and Utley's Park Service uniform jacket and collar ornaments. Other NPS History Collection finding aids describe further collections.

Sources

• National Park Service, NPS History Collection: "Guide to the Robert M. Utley Papers," a public-domain finding aid.