Arizona LGBT+ History Project is a collaboration between Phoenix Pride, Marshall Shore (Hip Historian) and Arizona State University Libraries. LGBT+ history is under-documented in Arizona archives and libraries. We are actively trying to change that by encouraging the documentation and preservation of documents, narratives and other items that tell the state’s LGBT+ history. You also have an extraordinary opportunity and responsibility to help. Your personal LGBT+ community material will have historical value for future generations.

In 2015, a building located at 222 E. Roosevelt St, in downtown Phoenix, was demolished to make way for a condominium development. The building was historically significant to Arizona’s LGBT+ community because it once housed the 307 Lounge, one of the earliest nightclubs in the Valley that catered to the LGBT+ community. It closed in 2000. Today, a plaque is planned for the spot where the club existed. But the losing fight to preserve the building highlighted how little was being done to preserve Arizona’s LGBT+ community history. And it created this movement bringing together like-minded individuals determined to heighten awareness, and to preserve and document the LGBT+ experience in Arizona.