The collection consists of the papers of Silas Skinner's family, primarily his descendants, who developed a ranch in Jordan Valley, Oregon. Individuals well-represented in the collection include Silas Skinner's son W. S. Skinner and daughter Annabel Skinner Hampton; W. S. Skinner's son S. K. Skinner and daughter-in-law Johanna Murray Skinner; and S. K. Skinner and Johanna Skinner's children Robert H. Skinner, John Sackett Skinner, and Jesse Johanna "Joanne" Skinner Owens. Personal papers in the collection consists of family correspondence, several diaries, photographs, clippings, reminiscences, and ephemera. The collection also contains papers and photographs of related families, particularly the Murray family.

The collection includes financial, property, and ranching records. Many of these document the finances, ownership, and operations of the Skinner Ranch, including a period when a portion of the land was owned by E. H. Clinton and his heirs in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and the period in the 1920s and 1930s when the ranch faced financial difficulties, was foreclosed, was leased to the Skinner family, and then was repurchased by the family. Other financial and property documents include records relating to the property and estate of the related Murray family in Oregon, the wills of individual family members, and the financial papers of W. S. Skinner's friend Willis G. Thompson.

The collection also includes materials that reflect the Skinner family's interest in local and family history. This includes the research that Johanna Skinner undertook to identify the gravesite of Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, John Sackett Skinner's efforts to ensure that she and S. K. Skinner were credited for their work in identifying the gravesite, and biographical and genealogical information. A significant portion of the biographical and genealogical information was compiled by John Sackett Skinner in the 1990s and 2000s as research for his book about the family, "High Desert Promise: The Skinner Family Legacy."