This collection contains the papers of former Congressman Gunn McKay and forms a substantial portion of USU Special Collections & Archive's holdings. This 506 box collection contains McKay's correspondence files, case files (included here are military liaison files and Ogden constituent files), legislative files, central files, public affairs files, personal files, and Democratic Party files accumulated during five sessions of the U.S. Congress. These materials document much of the government involvement in Utah during the 1970s. Some of the topics covered in McKay's papers are; environmental issues, including materials concerning the Golden Spike National Historic Site upgrade, the creation of several of the national parks in southern and eastern Utah, the question of wilderness policy in the West, the growth of the Central Utah Project; defense issues, including materials which discuss the planned deployment of the Mx missile system, the ongoing controversy over the army's testing of nuclear bombs in the 1950s, copies of the radiation victims hearings held in Utah, and materials concerning Hill Air Force Base. In addition to these Utah topics, the collection contains material about the Vietnam War, the environmental movement, Watergate and other national issues of the time.

The material in this collection has been arranged to reflect and retain McKay's original office filing system. Within each congress (92nd - 96th), there are roughly five repeating series, such as: correspondence files, case files (included here are military liaison files and Ogden constituent files), legislative files, central files, public affairs files, personal files and Democratic Party files. The files, with the exception of the central files, are all filed alphabetically by subject or surname and usually run for one session of a congress and then start over for the next session. Thus, for example they are designated as being from the 93rd Congress, 2nd Session. The central files which contain research material about different issues have two different filing systems. In the 92nd and the 96th congresses the records are filed alphabetically by subject. In the 93rd - 95th congresses the filing system changed to a numeric system that indicates the year the file was established and the number of its creation. This second number runs consecutively through the three congresses for example, 73- 401 and 74-402.

Use Restrictions. Because of the sensitive nature of a congressional collection certain problems of constituent confidentiality arise. With this in mind the records entitled case files (these being the files in which McKay was called upon by a constituent to aid them with problems they were having with the federal government) are restricted. Also restricted are the correspondence files that contain carbon copies of all of McKay's outgoing correspondence. These latter files may be used upon consultation with the staff of Special Collections & Archives.