The Walter E. Burnham Collection consists of personal and professional papers of Burnham, who was Manager of Manufacturing Research at the Boeing Company, Wichita Division in the 1950s and 1960s. The collection is organized into two series: Personal and Professional.

The personal series includes a small amount of correspondence but primarily consists of documents relating to his education and work in aeronautical engineering at Tri-State College in Angola, Indiana in the early 1930s. Included are transcripts and reports he wrote on topics including "Higher Physics," "Airplane Design," "B-80 Engines," and "Stress Analyiss of the Liberty Engine."

Series II. Professional makes up the bulk of the collection and primarily documents Burnham's time at the Boeing Company in the 1950s and 1960s. Included are personnel records, including Burnahm's initial job application for the Stearman Company as well as job descriptions and resumes for positions he oversaw as Managaer, and organizational charts for the Manufacturing Research Division in Wichita. There are some official Boeing photographs of people in the company although these are unidentified for the most part. The majority of the series consists of files with correspondence, memos, and reports, trade literature, and technical drawings on such topics as "Carbon," "Exrusions," "Fire Guide Bomb," "Gears," "Heat Transfer," "Penumatics," "Transmission," and "Turbo Prop Studies." There is also one folder on the "Travel Air Mystery-S" aircraft with photographic prints and negatives and an oversize blueline three-view drawing, which would date to his time at the Travel Air company around 1929, prior to his time at Boeing.