A few years back, Utah State University professor Sean Michael had an idea: What if you could chart and preserve the history of outdoor gear through a dedicated collection of old outfitter catalogs and magazines?
Michael approached Clint Pumphrey, curator for the university’s Special Collections and Archives (SCA), who took the idea and ran it by Chase Anderson, program director for the school’s Outdoor Product Design and Development program (OPDD).
The two departments forged a partnership that would focus on amassing and curating publications focused on outdoor recreational gear.
By 2018, the partnership was rolling fiercely, and in March 2019, the SCA/OPDD gear anthology officially launched. At its inception, Pumphrey and Anderson focused on curating outfitter catalogs and magazines from the 1960s onward — Chouinard (later rebranded as Patagonia), Eddie Bauer, and L.L.Bean were rudimentary.
But the once-humble trove has since given rise to a massive and inimitable library, the outdoor gear archive. A single donation of 1,200 catalogs seeded the project back in 2018. By March 2021, it had grown to house nearly 3,000 volumes from 200 publishers.
And that’s to say nothing of its fledgling photo, manuscript, and book collections. In September 2021, the archive acquired patents, footage, and original artwork belonging to the late Bill Moss of Moss Tent Works.
Pumphrey and Anderson have brought the entirety of the outdoor recreation archive alongside the SCA’s recreation collection, curated since the 1970s, online. Together, the gear and rec compilations make up USU’s Outdoor Recreation Archive (ORA). As of December 2021, the ORA has more than 10,000 catalogs and magazines from 800 or more sources.
A litany of the collection’s most prized artifacts, latest additions, and announcements populate the archive’s Instagram page.
“The archive’s Instagram following is bigger than OPDD’s and the [university] library’s. It’s been a really powerful tool. It’s helped us connect with many industry professionals,” said Anderson. “Reaching national publications and having so many people access the collection, it’s really a dream come true.”
Pumphrey added, “We’ve definitely exceeded our own expectations and generated more interest than we initially anticipated. That’s a pretty good problem to have.”
To access Utah State University’s Outdoor Recreation Archive, go to libguides.usu.edu/outdoorcatalogs. A digital exhibit dedicated to the outdoor catalogs and magazines collection is available at exhibits.usu.edu.
