Our Archives

Our Collections include books, newspaper articles, technical journals, pamphlets, government documents, engineering and planning reports, well records, maps, and aerial photos. They come from a wide-ranging group of donors, including individuals and public agencies, elected officials, engineers, and businessmen.

Our archives focus primarily on the Santa Ana River watershed and the Colorado River , but include records that have no geographical ties ( such as research documents) as well as other areas both in and outside of Southern California . Our newspaper archive includes articles on dozens of important local, regional, state, and national water issues over the past several years. We have US Geological Survey Water Supply Papers back to the 19 th century.

Most of our archives, with the exception of the newspaper archive, are historic in nature. These are tailor made for researching the water-related past of our region. As you explore our website, you will see that our vision of an archive goes beyond the standard model of old books and files. Our archives include digital data, geospatially based data, and digital books. We want them to be as easy to use as possible; we strive for improvement in this area everyday.

Santa Ana Watershed Bibliography

The WRI's Santa Ana watershed bibliography is now completed and online. Click here to access it. The 300-page document, completed in October 2004, includes a number of excellent maps of the watershed, as well as thousands of bibliographic references. These include books, reports, media reports, government documents, and court documents.

The bibliography was written by the Redlands Institute for the Water Resources Institute-a collaboration of two academic institutions for the betterment of watershed stakeholders and researchers.