Histories of the American West at the William Andrews Clark Memorial Library

Narratives of American political life are ubiquitous in the Clark Library collections. Political propaganda like Manifest Destiny, a 19th-century American ideology of westward expansion, is particularly prevalent. Manifest Destiny urged Americans westward, and led them to dispossess, displace, and murder thousands of Indigenous people in the 1800s alone. The collection addresses these themes through material on the Lewis & Clark Expedition (1804–1806), national parks, railroads, and more. It also includes materials by and about American presidents and Congress.

The Lewis & Clark expedition was one of the first instances of U.S. westward expansion that influenced the U.S.’ Manifest Destiny fervor. The Clark Library collection includes the first edition of the Lewis & Clark reports; hundreds of books about the expedition from scholars in the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries; and a carved walnut containing an illustrated depiction of the expedition—the Lewis & Clark Expedition in a Nutshell.

The Clark Library holds various materials about U.S. National Parks and their formations. Importantly, U.S. National Parks have historically been used by the American government to displace Indigenous communities in the American West under the guise of environmentalism. 

Collection materials include:

• Early history of Glacier National Park, Montana (1919): A book by Madison Grant (1865–1937), an anthropologist, zoologist, and eugenicist, who worked to expand U.S. national parks. He conserved redwood trees and the American bison, and he contributed to eugenics propaganda in The Passing of the Great Race in 1916. 

• Fossil forests of the Yellowstone National Park (1914): A geological survey by Frank Hall Knowlton (1860–1926) published by the U.S. Department of the Interior. 

• Glaciers of Glacier National Park (1914): A geological survey by William Clinton Alden (1871–1959) published by the U.S. Department of the Interior. 

• Report of the acting Superintendent of the Yellowstone National Park to the Secretary of the Interior (1897): A periodical published between 1894 and 1906, this report outlined activities and updates to Yellowstone National Park soon after its 1872 creation.

Collection materials include: 

• A compilation of the messages and papers of the Presidents, 1789–1897 (1897): A 10-volume collection of books compiled by James Daniel Richardson (1843–1914) and published by the authority of Congress. 

• Report of a visit to the Sioux and Ponka Indians of the Missouri River (1872): A report made by William Welshe (1807–1878) for the Secretary of the Interior.

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) manuscripts, including Jefferson’s Nail Book and letters on the Louisiana Purchase: William Andrews Clark, Jr. was an alumnus of the University of Virginia and had a particular interest in Jefferson; most of the Jefferson material Clark collected was gifted to UVA, but some materials remain at the Clark Library.

To find periodicals, printed books, posters, pictorial works, and manuscripts go to UC Library Search. Click on “Advanced Search,” select the “Subject” field, and type either “Yellowstone National Park,” “Montana – Glacier National Park,” “Dakota,” “United States – History – Sources,” “United States – Politics and government,” “Indians of North America – Missions,” or “Mississippi River.” To search for works by specific figures, select the “Author” field, and type “Clark, William, 1770–1838,” for example. You can also do a keyword search either in the simple search or in the “Any field” field of the “Advanced Search.” Once you have search results, you can limit to the Clark Library by selecting it from the “UCLA Locations” facet.