The Center of Southwest Studies at Fort Lewis College is celebrating its 55th anniversary with a gala on Thursday, August 22nd from 6:00-9:00 pm in the Center’s Plaza. Tickets are $100.00 supporting the Center’s educational programming aimed at student success. Attendees will be treated to live guitar music, a performance from the college’s Ballet Folklorico, and delicious food and beverages. Please visit www.fortlewis.edu/55thgala for ticketing and charitable contribution information. Limited seating. Please make your reservation by August 16th.

The Center of Southwest Studies provides an active program of free public lectures and events year-round at its museum, research library, and archives facility on the campus of Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado. The Center was imagined and founded in 1964 by Morley and Arthur Ballantine, former publishers of the Durango Herald, college president John Reed, and professor of history, Dr. Robert Delaney, to collect and curate all aspects of the history of the Southwest. The Center was the first of its kind to exclusively focus on the Southwest. Over the years the Center has collected thousands of original documents, photos, artifacts and rare books, all to be cared for and made readily available to faculty, students and researchers from all over the world. It remains as one of the premier facilities with the best archival photograph collection and textile collection, the Durango Collection®, of any undergraduate institution in the West. According to Center director, Shelby Tisdale, “It is through the insight and vision of our founders, Morley and Arthur Ballantine, and the ongoing generous support of the Ballantine family that the Center of Southwest Studies has grown from a modest library and archives in a small lean-to attached to the Academic Building, to the 50,000 square foot building on the north end of the Fort Lewis College campus that houses the Center’s archives, library and museum as well as academic classrooms, faculty and staff offices, and a storage area for the college’s collections. As we celebrate our 55th anniversary we look to a future of continuing our support of student success and community engagement. Please join us in honoring our founders and thanking the Ballantine family for more than half a century of ongoing support.”