Ken Sleight, an inspiration for ‘The Monkey Wrench Gang,’ loses personal archive in Utah wildfire

 Zak Podmore, "Ken Sleight, an inspiration for ‘The Monkey Wrench Gang,’ loses personal archive in Utah wildfire" Salt Lake Tribune, June 16, 2021,  https://www.sltrib.com/news/2021/06/16/ken-sleight-an/

Not a scrap of paper from Sleight’s boxes survived the blaze. Metal filing cabinets melted in the heat and the roof of the steel hut warped. The lettering was peeling from road signs in the ranch named after Abbey’s work — Desert Solitaire, Seldom Seen, Abbey Road — and great swaths of trees were burned. Four homes in Pack Creek Ranch were destroyed, and five others were damaged. Six outbuildings, including Sleight’s hut, were lost, according to Utah Wildfire Info.

Sleight’s nearby home and the rental cabins scattered throughout the ranch, which he bought with his wife, Jane, in the mid-1980s, were spared from the fire. But the loss of other homes in the neighborhood and the historical material that Sleight hoped to use for a book project and to donate to a university archives is devastating.

COMMENT

 A wildfire sparked by a campfire destroyed the historical archive collected by Ken Slight, a long-time environmental activist in southern Utah.   Slight, who was working on a book, had intended to donate the material to a University archives, but instead, due to a careless camper a valuable trove of regional memory went up in smoke.   Librarians could never assemble such a collections of records, letters and photographs associated with a person who is deeply involved in his community.  The archive would have been utterly unique.