The Denver Public Library Friends Foundation requests funding from the Council on Library and Information Resources for “In Plain Sight: Uncovering Hidden Manuscript Collections of Western Authors, Environmentalists, Researchers and Historians.” The eighteen manuscript collections included in this proposal form an integral part of the Library’s Western History and Conservation Collections. The synthesis between the two collections increasingly overlaps as historians write about the development of land in the West and the impact of change on regional cultures and Native Americans. Included are original manuscripts, correspondence, unpublished materials, research notes, photographs, family and personal papers, and other materials documenting these writers’ lives. Also included is documentation of research in conservation, environmental history, the American West, Mexican/Spanish folklore, Colorado history and Native Americans. Project authors include Thomas Hornsby Ferril, the Colorado Poet Laureate known as the “most honored poet of the Rocky Mountain West;” Arthur L. Campa, who studied and wrote about Spanish and Mexican folklore and Ina Sizer Cassidy who was Director of the Federal Writers' Project in New Mexico and participated in the New Mexico Association on Indian Affairs. Conservationists include Howard Zahniser, who helped draft legislation that became the Wilderness Act (1964); and Ray Alcorn and George Laycock who wrote extensively on the environment and wildlife.