Bella Vista Elementary
One of the great joys (and privileges) of my job is that I am try and help facilitate the preservation of history in places. This has been acute as of late as I have worked on a project to preserve the history of the elementary school I, and my kids, attended: Bella Vista Elementary.
Last year the Canyons School District conducted a boundary study and decided to close Bella Vista. This hit me (and the community) hard, as the school has been in continuous operation since 1965. This summer the former head of the Bella Vista PTA reached out and asked about the possibility of remembering the school through an exhibit or monument at the Cottonwood Heights City Hall campus.
Since the request came to me in my role as the chair of the Cottonwood Heights Historic Committee, I was able to align things and work with the Canyons School District to transfer the historic records they had for Bella Vista to the Utah State Archives and Records Service. We will now loan out materials to Cottonwood Heights for exhibit use in the months ahead.
This week, I went and picked up the records from the Canyons SD offices, and it has been a blast going through them. It is a rare treat as an archivist to literally see yourself in the records, but here we are (or more appropriately, here I am):
