Home1917–2017 Centennial

1917–2017 Centennial

Deep Springs at 100

Centennial Commemorative Book

A boxed set – an evocation – a family scrapbook – DSC100 is a collection of voices from Deep Springs.

It is a prompt to further storytelling, a chapbook of principles and purposes, a meta-history, an oral account, a stroll through the archives, a museum of artifacts, a catalogue of ambitions, a memory of disputes, a reminder of failures, and a visual anthology spanning 100 years.

Comprising six volumes with 250 individual entries and 200 photos from 130 contributors, DSC100 is both a celebration and a foundation for the next 100 years, as unique as the college it’s dedicated to.

Scroll down to learn more, and check out this brief video to see all the components of this expansive collection.

To order a copy of the book please a member of the Development team.

DSC100 gathers the conversations, the work, the scenery, the tall tales, the animals, the accomplishments, the arguments, the friendships, the intellectual epiphanies, the isolation, the votes, the minutiae of daily life, and the sadness upon leaving the Valley—those elements that embed Deep Springs so deeply in memory and yet often make the experience difficult to convey to those who have not passed a season here.

DSC100 instead comprises six separately bound thematic “folios” of roughly fifty pages each: Academics, Labor, Self-Government, Voice of the Desert, Community, and Dialectic. The last treats the community’s ongoing effort to understand its Nunnian purpose, and recalls the arguments that have arisen out of disagreements about deeply held principles. It also reminds us of times when the College has fallen short of its ideals, and it tracks the “productive misalignment” that results from Deep Springs’s self-imposed isolation from the mainstream of American culture.

DSC100contents

The six folios of DSC100 come packaged in a clamshell box along with a chronological timeline marking events from every year, and a newly compiled topographic map that, unlike current USGS maps, places Deep Springs Valley where it properly belongs—square in the middle of the sheet.

The timeline includes color-coded references to specific entries in the folios, so that individual stories can be understood within the context of other events of the time—stories told in other folios. Ultimately, DSC100 doesn’t attempt to “explain” Deep Springs. It evokes the ways each of us experiences the place. The folio structure invites the reader to explore the underlying currents of Deep Springs intuitively and intimately, whether dipping in for a glimpse or following an idea across the breadth of an entire folio.

The truth is you can’t capture a century in a single document. But you can distill the essential elements from those 100 years into a single package. DSC100evokes the character of what students, staff, faculty, and families have experienced while living and working at Deep Springs. It reveals how much has changed over the course of ten decades in the Valley. And how little.

“A few moments ago, I was browsing through a collection of photos from the first years of Deep Springs. It led me to reflect that, though the clothes and hairstyles be different, Deep Springers then and Deep Springers now are actually receiving nourishment from the same taproot.” –Gerry Saucier DS’73, SB Trustee, Newsletter #19, 1974

DSC100 was edited and art directed by James Gibbs, David Welle, and Kevin West, with additional editorial input and archival research from Brad Edmondson. Art direction and design were by DBOX. The book was produced with generous support from Sally Carlson, Tom Hudnut, and the estate of Ron Alexander, with additional funding provided by Curt Karplus.

DSC100: Deep Springs College, est. 1917 can only be purchased directly from Deep Springs. This is a limited edition once-in-a-hundred-years publication. Each hand-numbered copy is $90 plus $10 for shipping and handling. 

You can also place an order by snail mail. Send your check (made out to Deep Springs College) care of: Main Office, Deep Springs College, HC 72 Box 45001, Dyer, NV 89010. Please include a note that your check is for purchase of DSC100.