Register of the J. Cecil Alter Papers,

J. Cecil Alter (31 March 1879 - 20 May 1964) was a professional meteorologist and amateur historian who distinguished himself in both fields. During his residence in Utah from 1902-1941, his energy and high scientific standards helped build both the Utah State Weather Service and the Utah State Historical Society into sound professional organizations, and his publications in both of his fields of interest made valuable contributions in Utah culture.

Alter was not a native Utahn. He was born in Rensselear, Indiana and no doubt inherited much of his aggressive curiosity from his father, John E. Alter, who was a farmer, civil engineer, surveyor, and school teacher. Although Alter eventually followed his father into all of those fields, his formal education was limited to spotty attendance at several colleges. A correspondence course from Columbia and avid reading on his own led him into meteorology. After preparing exhibits for both the Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Weather Service at several international conferences, Alter was assigned to the Weather Bureau at Salt Lake City. He arrived here in 1902 and stayed until 1941, with brief interruptions when he was temporarily assigned to Weather Bureau offices in Medford, Oregon, and Cheyenne, Wyoming.

During his service with the Utah State Weather Service, Alter published widely in scientific journals and developed improved ways of reporting rain and snowfall which were later adopted nationwide. In 1941 he was transferred to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he spent the last eight years of his meteorological career. Upon his retirement in 1949, he moved to California.

It is not clear when Alter picked up his interest in history. It may have been forced upon him because of his travels and the necessity of making himself feel at home in strange environments. At any rate, the Utah environment, which must have been at least as strange as any he encountered elsewhere (he was a Midwesterner, a Christian Scientist, and a Mason), had clearly captured his interest very soon after he moved here. When he was appointed a member of the board of control of the Utah State Historical Society in 1928, he already had two books on Utah to his credit: James Bridger: Trapper, Frontiersman, Scout and Guide (1925), and Through the Heart of the Scenic West (1927). Alter was a well-known personality in Utah, both because of his colorful weather forecasting, but also because of a series of travel articles, "Tribune Travelogs," which had appeared in the Salt Lake Tribune during the 1920s. Some of those articles, which were written to capitalize upon the new interest in tourism and the good roads movement later found their way into Through the Heart of The Scenic West.

While editor of the Utah Historical Quarterly, Alter attempted to establish a regular publication schedule and to secure a level of funding from the State Legislature commensurate with the task. He established a tradition of ambitious publishing projects in the Quarterly. During his editorship, for example, he published the Dominguez-Escalante Journal, the Diary of Almon Harris Thompson, and three additional volumes devoted to the records of the John Wesley Powell explorations of the Colorado River in 1869 and 1871-1872.

Although Alter's interpretive skills would not place him in the first rank of Utah historians, several of his books are indispensable even after a half century. His biography of the mountain man James Bridger, for example, is still a standard work. Alter's skills as a historian, though, were more in the field of compiling reference works and publishing original docents. His Early Utah Journalism is still one of the most frequently consulted Utah reference works. Utah: The Storied Domain, which consists of one volume of chronologically arranged news articles from the Deseret News and the Millenial Star comprising a sort of running narrative of raw material for Utah history, and two volumes of biographical sketches, is unevenly useful The first volume is rarely consulted, but the biographical sketches are invaluable, for they include many persons untreated elsewhere. Through the Heart of the Scenic West has worn less well than the others, largely because it was superseded in thoroughness and sophistication by the WPA Utah: A Guide to the State in 1941, but it still contains lively writing and entertaining anecdotes and information that can enliven a trip almost anywhere from Yellowstone National Park to the Kaibab Plateau.

Alter's final gift to the Utah State Historical Society, made during his retirement years in California, was his personal library, one of the finest collections of Utah books and Western Americana ever to come to the Society. Financial pressures forced him to sell most of the books rather than donate them (though he also donated many of them), but his prices were usually only a fraction of the book's worth--often only two or three dollars. When he died in 1964, Utah had good reason to go into mourning, and his remains were returned to his adopted state.

The J. Cecil Alter papers currently in possession of the Utah State Historical Society document virtually the entire period during which he was affiliated with the Society and the entire spectrum of his interests in Utah history and meteorology. While Alter's publications constitute his major contribution to Utah, his unpublished memoirs contain items of interest.

While most of the collection is self-explanatory and easily accessible from the inventory which follows, the material in Box 1 does merit additional comment. The autobiographical material in Folder 1 consists of compilations of data made by Alter himself and transcripts of newspaper clippings. The researcher should be aware that the Society's newspaper clipping files contain an additional folder on Alter, and additional biographical facts are available there.

The general correspondence file in Folder 2 contains some of the most interesting material in the collection. One notable item is a letter from Francis Marion Bishop, 28 April 1922, responding to Alter's request for an interview regarding Bishop's experiences while a member of Major John Wesley Powell's 1871-1872 exploration of the Colorado River and Plateau. "The Colorado Canyon is certainly a wonderful study," Bishop exclaimed. The original of this letter has been removed to the vault, and researchers are requested to use the photocopy provided.

Other noteworthy items of correspondence include the series of letters throughout 1923 among Alter, the Oregon Historical Society, and others regarding the publication of documents relating to Peter Skene Ogden. Another interesting series is the correspondence between 1932-1935 with Josiah F. Gibbs, author of many anti-Mormon and historical essays, including Lights and Shadows of Mormonism (1909). Gibbs was a long-time resident of Marysvale, and a student of the history of central and southern Utah. The letters to Alter concern publication of three articles on the Black Hawk War and Utah Indians (see Utah Historical Quarterly Index). One of them (13 April 1931) contains the hope that the Quarterly will not become "a medium for circulating Mormon experiences and indirectly of 'testimonies' to the 'divinity of Joseph Smith's Mission'--eighty years association with that chiefest of humbugs is sufficient for one lifetime." A Wyoming historian, Dr. Grace Raymond Hebard, wrote frequently to Alter during the period 1932-1935 requesting information regarding several matters in Utah history, particularly the building of the transcontinental telegraph and the history of the Pony Express.

Three additional letters round out the heart of the Alter correspondence. On 28 March 1939 Alter wrote to Herbert E. Gregory, a prominent geologist and explorer of southern Utah to thank him for sending a copy of his The San Juan Country, Utah (U.S. Geologica] Survey Professional Paper 188). He also comments on the Quarterly's forthcoming publication of Gregory's edited version of Almon Harris Thompson's diary and alludes to a running discussion with Herbert S. Auerbach on the desirability of publishing such large documents piecemeal in order to ensure regular appearances of the Quarterly, rather than publishing huge issues irregularly in order to get an entire document into one issue. A letter of 21 January 1941 to B. Spencer Young gives Alter's selections of basic items in a bibliography of published sources for Western history. Finally, Oregon historian Alice B. Maloney wrote to Alter on 16 February 1941, enclosing a summary of her research on the little-known mountain man John Gantt.

Folder 3 contains several small files of correspondence and research notes on Western history topics, including Kit Carson, the Mountain Meadows and Gunnison Massacres, the Utah State Prison, protection of wildlife, and historical societies in other Western states. Additionally, there are brief biographical sketches of the following prominent Utahns: Judge Florence E. Allen, Lucy Gates, Jeanette Acord Hyde, Amy Brown Lyman, Minnie W. Miller, and Johanna H. Sprague.

The rest of the collection requires little explanation beyond the inventory which follows. One possible exception is the fact that the research notes for Alter's books on James Bridger and Utah newspapers are not organized in any readily discernible manner and must be approached with considerable patience and industry.

Restrictions on Access:

Restrictions on Access

Creator:

Alter, J. Cecil, 1879-1964.

Language:

English.

Sponsor:

Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) grant, 2007-2008

Quantity:

5 boxes (2.5 linear ft.)

Language of the Finding Aid:

Finding aid written in Englishin Latin script

EAD Creation Date:

1999.

Related Material:

See also the J. Cecil Alter Papers, 1896-1959 Mss B 541.