This collection consists of a variety of different materials spanning the personal and professional life of Royce S. Bringhurst, including diaries, correspondence, audio recordings, publications, notes, reports, field data, awards, and other items. The personal papers include materials from Bringhurst’s childhood in the 1920s, high school and college days in the 1930s, mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in the 1940s, and military service during World War II, as well as papers from his retirement in the 1990s and 2000s. The professional papers relate to his extensive career as a pomologist at University of California Davis from the 1950s to the 1990s.

The Royce S. Bringhurst papers cover a large span of time and would be of use to researchers pursuing a variety of topics. They contain firsthand accounts of Latter-day Saint (LDS) mission work in the American Southwest in the years preceding the Second World War as well as the experiences of a LDS soldier serving in the United States Air Corps during WWII. Additionally, these materials provide information about the development of strawberry pomology, a field in which Bringhurst garnered international attention throughout the 1970s and 1980s.