The Community Improvement Through Local History Project was an initiative conceived by Charles S. Peterson of USU’s Man and His Bread Museum (now independently run as the American West Heritage Center), History and Geography department head William F. Lye, and the Utah State Historical Society’s Coordinator of Collections and Preservation, Jay M. Haymond. These men submitted the initial application for the project to USU’s Kellogg Quality of Rural Life Program on September 17, 1973, for which they received a $10,000 grant. Later funding came from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The goals of the project were four-fold: (1) To more fully utilize local history as a resource by which the quality of rural life may be improved. (2) To involve rural people in identifying their local history and applying it in such a way as will enhance the quality of life. (3) To establish local organizations which will foster and facilitate the involvement of people and apply history to community needs on an ongoing basis (4) To train leaders in each target community in the methods by which local history is identified and applied.

Workshops, seminars, lectures, and, notably, an oral history program, were funded through the project. For more information on the Community Improvement Through Local History Project, see University Archives 14.6/5:17, Box 11, Folder 1.

While the collection covers a wide variety of topics, two of the best represented are Charles Redd and Carbon County.

Redd was born on May 8, 1889 in San Juan, Utah, where he learned about ranching from an early age. After attending the Brigham Young Academy in Provo, Redd became the manager of the La Sal Livestock Company, later known as Redd Ranches. In 1931 he married Annaley Naegle, with whom he fathered nine children. Meanwhile, Redd skillfully applied scientific knowledge to livestock breeding and range improvement, increasing the capacity of his rangeland as much as 10 times and earning the title "Man of the Year in Livestock" from Record Stockman Magazine in 1946. He served as a trustee for Utah State University, as Chairman of the Utah Water and Power Board, and as director of the Cowboy Hall of Fame, the Utah Historical Heritage Foundation, Utah Power and Light, and Amalgamated Sugar. He also served in the Utah State Legislature. Redd passed away in Provo in 1975.

The territorial legislature formed Carbon County from a part of Emery County in 1894. Mormon settlers came to the region in the 1870s founding communities in the Price River Valley like Price, Helper, Wellington, and East Carbon. While many of these early residents took up farming and ranching, coal became an important economic asset with the arrival of the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad in the 1880s. The coal boom brought many southern and eastern European, as well as Japanese laborers to Carbon County. Coal continues to play an important role in the county economy, as does the College of Eastern Utah, founded as Carbon college in 1937. CEU became a part of Utah State University system in 2010. The 2010 census showed Carbon County with a population of 21,403.