CWU Brooks Library Opens Treasure Trove of Roslyn, Cle Elum History

Suncadia Legacy makes vast Krueger collection accessible to general public

Suncadia Legacy, a new digital collection that presents the history of coal mining and daily life in Roslyn, Cle Elum and Ronald, is now available online through Central Washington University’s Brooks Library. Launched in April 2014, Suncadia Legacy was made possible through the generous support of the Suncadia Fund for Community Enhancement (SFCE) and New Suncadia, LLC, a four-star resort and community built on land once mined by Northwestern Improvement Company in upper Kittitas County.

Suncadia Legacy features oral histories, photographs, and documents collected by a local history teacher, Frederick Krueger, between 1972 and 2003. These materials include audio and video interviews with local residents who reflect on immigrant traditions, mining techniques, family and work life in northern Kittitas County, from 1892 to 2004.

“We were honored to be the recipients of Fred Krueger’s collection,” said Patricia Cutright, CWU dean of libraries, “and we are grateful for both the funding and the resort’s generosity, which allows to provide unlimited access to these valuable materials.”

Originally commissioned by Trend West Resorts, the collection once existed on VHS and cassette tape, but it has now been preserved digitally and online via CWU’s institutional repository, ScholarWorks. The collection makes decades of previously inaccessible history available to the general public and can be found at http://digitalcommons.cwu.edu/suncadia.

“Both the fund and the resort have always supported Kittitas County’s unique and vibrant heritage,” said Patricia Simpson, Suncadia’s director of Community Associations. “This was a great way to collaborate with local institutions to make Fred’s collection available to the community and the resort visitors.”

In addition to supporting the Suncadia Legacy collection, the SFCE and the Resort also provided funding for ScholarWorks—an institutional repository that preserves and makes accessible faculty and student scholarship as well as archival collections like Suncadia Legacy.

Launched in April 2014, ScholarWorks provides a free publishing platform for CWU faculty, staff, and students who wish to document and share their work with the international community of scholars. Brooks Library notes that, since April, the repository has attracted much attention, with more than 20,000 downloads and page views to date. In the future, the library looks forward to sharing more of the history and scholarship produced in this region via ScholarWorks.

For more information, please contact scholarworks@cwu.edu or 509-963-1718.

Photo: Six miners posing in a mines shaft at Mine No. 9 near Roslyn, Washington. (c. 1960)

Media Contact: Valerie Chapman-Stockwell, Public Affairs, 509-963-1518, valeriec@cwu.edu