Beyond Fronteras

Public History at Its Best

By: Michelle K. Berry

Vibrant public history brings communities together and showcases stories that are otherwise difficult to find. These attributes perfectly describe the Beyond Fronteras: The Nogales and Santa Cruz County History Proejct. The project director and coordinator is UArizona’s very own Carlso Parra. Dr. Parra developed Beyond Fronteras with funding from an Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) Grant provided by the Arizona Department of Education to the Santa Cruz County School Superintendent’s Office. It is Nogales’ first bilingual local history exhibit.

The students in the Spring 2024 edition of HIST 355 (US Environmental History) were treated to a rare opportunity for experiential, project-based, and community-focused learning through Dr. Parra’s project. He approached me (Michelle Berry) and the PHC hoping for some collaboration on the project. The project’s aim was to create locally-sourced histories of Santa Cruz County that were rarely told and then fashion them into a multimedia museum and secondary education curriculum. This was a BIG task. To accomplish it, Dr. Parra needed the primary research to be done on the topics the project partners had chosen, write up museum copy for the analog museum exhibits and work on digitizing the materials collected so they could be used by the county’s public school teachers. Those would then be used to inform history curriculum for the public schools in Santa Cruz County. As we brainstormed, we decided it would be powerfully effective teaching to involve the undergraduate students in Berry’s HIST 355 for the research part of the project.

The result of the students’ work is an impressive collection of little known stories about Santa Cruz county’s colorful past. Students wrote on important tree species in the county, the history of cattle in the area, Hispanic heritage, the lost border town of Calabasas among many others. HIST 355 students submitted their material for use in the analog exhibits and in the curriculum lesson plans The permanent multimedia local history educational project exhibition is located in the Santa Cruz County historic courthouse. It is free and open to the public during regular business hours and contains not just the HIST 355 exhibits but also art, photography, and artifacts from local community members. The digital materials can be found here.

The opening of the exhibit was attended by hundreds of folks. Mariachi music celebrated the opening accompanied by delicious food and broad acclaim. Several media outlets have covered the event and the project including KJZZ in Phoenix, the Nogales International, and the University of Arizona News.

Dr. Parra and I worked with the undergraduate students for about 6 weeks. Their research pulled from primary sources as much as possible and resulted in beautiful, bilingual exhibit boards like the one on the Jaguar by junior history major, Gabby Vanover (pictured below).

This is one of the best assignments I’ve ever gotten to do in school. College, high school…all of it. It was so rewarding to see my work result in something so powerful.

~ Student in HIST 355

Not only was this a wonderful teaching and learning experience for students and faculty alike, it is also an example of public history at its best. Community-focused, publicly responsive, and inclusive of a variety of voices, perspectives, and topics, the project shows what can be accomplished with creative collaborations and committed outreach.