Paul Bunyan Collection

About the Paul Bunyan Collection

The Paul Bunyan Collection at the University of Minnesota was established in 1960 with the gift of an extensive group of books, pamphlets, photographs, etc., the result of many years' active collecting by the late Professor W. W. Charters of Ohio State University.

Since then, gifts from donors and purchases by the library have produced a sizeable assemblage of books, manuscripts, pamphlets, reprints, newspaper clippings, drawings, photographs, phonograph records and other memorabilia.

Noteworthy material includes the W. B. Laughead papers, secured via Elwood Maunder, Executive Director of the Forest History Foundation, and which include original cartoons, correspondence, sketches and finished drawings, a file of Red River Lumber Company ads from the American Lumberman and Mississippi Valley Lumberman, and stories both in pamphlet and manuscript form. We received an extensive collection of manuscripts from James Stevens of Seattle (again thanks to Mauder), correspondence - mainly with Alfred Knopf and H. L. Mencken, but including letters from Stuart Chase, Louis Adamic and William Green of the AFL, clippings, and photographs. Dorothy Moulding Brown of Madison, Wisconsin, another notable collector of Paul Bunyan lore, donated a variety of material, which is now a part of the collection.

View the Paul Bunyan Collection Guide for a full listing of materials.

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