PRESERVING THE PAPER TRAIL — AND THE DIGITAL ONE
Historic Archive
The murals are only part of the story. Brochures, websites, photographs, fine-art prints, newspaper clippings, dedication programs, videos, board records, and personal collections preserve the history behind the paint.
WEB HISTORY
The Original oasisofmurals.com
The project’s early website survives through archived snapshots. A January 2003 capture preserves navigation for the first sixteen murals, a sculpture, gifts, the Global Mural Conference 2000, organizational information, and credits.
Legacy connection: Michael Collins helped create and maintain the original website with Vickie Waite. Surviving archived material credits Collins and Waite and preserves a 2005 copyright notice in Collins’s name. A surviving local PDF printout of the old homepage also preserves the mural-image sequence used on that historic site, providing a valuable visual reference for the working archive as image provenance is reviewed.
PRINT HISTORY
Limited-Edition Mural Prints
Signed and numbered fine-art prints of early murals helped finance the program and ongoing maintenance. The 2021 brochure records editions of 150 for each of the early mural print series.
Legacy collection: Michael Collins has preserved a personal collection of official mural prints, including numerous framed examples numbered #45 as well as unframed copies. Their signatures, numbering, editions, and provenance will be documented individually rather than assumed.
ORGANIZATION
Action Council Records
Board lists, minutes, correspondence, fundraising records, dedication materials, and newsletters can help reconstruct how the mural program actually worked—and who made it happen.
Recovered record: an archived Year 2000 Action Council page lists Michael Collins among the organization’s Directors, providing contemporary evidence of his formal role in the mural organization.
ORAL HISTORY
Firsthand Memories
Memories from artists, organizers, building owners, volunteers, residents, and board members are preserved as firsthand recollection and compared with documentary sources.
PHOTOGRAPHS & VIDEO
The Murals in Their Time
Historic photographs and video can preserve lost murals, original streetscapes, dedications, restorations, and the people standing beside the work.
Images added to the working archive will retain source and provenance notes. Before final public launch, the image collection will receive a dedicated review for attribution, credits, and replacement where appropriate. A working extraction from Michael Collins’s preserved OAM.pdf has recovered historic homepage images for M01–M20 plus the old-site image labeled Battle of the Bell as Mural 21; that historic numbering is being retained in the archive rather than silently converted to the later M01–M26 sequence. The 2021 Oasis of Murals brochure has also supplied working images for M21–M26, giving the project a complete working image set for all 26 official murals. The M01–M20 historic images are credited to the original OasisOfMurals.com archive and to Michael Collins / Vickie Waite, as applicable, consistent with the surviving copyright notice. The M21–M26 brochure-derived working images remain subject to final attribution, permission, or replacement before public launch.
RESEARCH DESK
Questions Still Open
Unresolved dates, names, ownership, organizational roles, and conflicting records remain visible as research questions instead of being silently guessed away. Current examples include the exact relationship between Jeff Smeetal and the first mural building identified in surviving records as Plaza Furniture; the formal process that made a work an official Oasis mural; the commissioning date and status of the later TPHS STEM mural; and address/date discrepancies preserved elsewhere in this archive.
HOW THE ARCHIVE LABELS EVIDENCE
Four kinds of source
Primary / Contemporary Record
Material created during the period being documented: board lists, dedication programs, original websites, photographs, correspondence, minutes, and similar records.
Current Official Source
Present-day material published by Action 29 Palms, the City of Twentynine Palms, or another organization speaking for its own current records.
Secondary Source
Later histories, articles, brochures, summaries, and other works that interpret or compile earlier information.
Firsthand Recollection
Memories from Michael Collins and other people who participated in, witnessed, or lived alongside the mural program.
When sources disagree, the disagreement stays visible until stronger evidence resolves it. The archive does not silently merge conflicting versions into one convenient story.
An archive under construction
Materials will be added with provenance whenever possible: what the item is, where it came from, approximately when it was created, and what it can—and cannot—establish about the history.