The papers illustrate Raymond Penn's interest in and commitment to land use planning, although they afford very incomplete coverage of his career. There are no personal papers in the collection and only a small amount of correspondence documents his direct, professional activities. Nevertheless, the collected materials do provide a broad outline of rural planning in Wisconsin from the 1930's through the 1960's.
The collection includes correspondence, reports, zoning ordinances, and reference data and is divided into subject files and local zoning reference files.
The Subject Files, which are arranged alphabetically, primarily contain correspondence and annual and narrative reports pertaining to various rural planning projects and studies beginning in the 1930's and to various water resources study committees on which Penn served. The narrative annual reports are extremely valuable in documenting the planning activities of Penn and others in his department. Also filed here, although it predates Penn's tenure with the department is a file of reports on the resettlement effort in Northern Wisconsin during the 1930's. Also of interest here is the information on Penn's role in the attempt to pass water pollution legislation in 1957. The file on the Forest Crop Advisory Committee contains minutes, reports, and draft legislation and administrative rules. Also included is a file of Penn's miscellaneous writings and teaching materials.
Possibly of greater value because of the difficulty of locating copies of local laws is the Local Zoning Reference File which includes printed and draft copies of zoning ordinances passed by Wisconsin counties and local communities, related correspondence, and reports. This file includes a large amount of reference material which Penn borrowed (and apparently never returned) from departmental libraries, and it includes a number of examples of important ordinances passed during the 1930's and 1940's. Most extensively represented are the counties with which he was involved in planning work: Eau Claire County and Oneida County. These files are arranged alphabetically by county.
