Earl Douglass papers

Collection

Identifier: MS 0196

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

The Earl Douglass papers (1879-1953) consist of the family and business records of Earl Douglass (1862-1931), a paleontologist from Minnesota, including the records of the discovery, history, and development of Dinosaur National Monument.

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Douglass worked for the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh during most of his productive years. He was responsible for the excavation and installation of the first dinosaur bones on display at the University of Utah Museum of Natural History. During 1928-29 Douglass worked for the Gilson Asphaltum Company. Correspondence, expense reports, and mineral surveys are a part of his scientific notes. The latter years of his life he was a consulting geologist for companies engaged in developing oil fields in Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and Texas. The museum at Dinosaur National Monument showing dinosaur bones in relief is perhaps the single most lasting tribute to Earl Douglass. This collection of his papers is a record of his years of searching, working, writing, and photographing.

Earl Douglass wrote profusely. His writings include diaries, field notes, scientific notes, legions of correspondence (both personal and business), published articles, manuscripts, poetry, stories, and essays, as well as numerous reflections, musings, and notes on many subjects. He also collected maps and photographs. This is a nearly complete record of Douglass's life as he saved everything, even scraps of paper on which he took notes while in the field or while pondering philosophical issues at his desk. His autobiographical essays give an insight into his personal life as well as his thoughts and aspirations. The Douglass family is also documented through some genealogical records.

Earl Douglass's diaries cover the period 1884 to 1928 and are reflective in nature. Day-to-day activities are not recorded as often as day-to-day musings on his personal emotions. Filed at the end of the diaries is a manuscript titled "From the Diaries of Earl Douglass," by his son, G. E. Douglass.

Douglass's personal correspondence, especially with his wife Pearl, is another indication of the sensitivity of this man, and how his life was consumed with his work and personal philosophy. Douglass corresponded regularly with numerous friends and kept in close touch with professional associates. His correspondence with the staff of the Carnegie Museum, notably William J. Holland, the director, is especially informative concerning his work.

Earl Douglass's detailed descriptions of Dinosaur National Monument, specifically the dinosaur quarry, form what is perhaps the most complete analysis and history of the area and its special place in the field of American paleontology. A large number of scientific notes are included on topics ranging from fossils to rivers, some original, but most of them copied by Douglass from other sources and saved for future reference.

Douglass's formal writings are divided into two categories: technical and creative. His technical writings were published in scientific and popular journals and newspapers. Many of his manuscripts were not published. Douglass's creative writings, largely unpublished, are extensive and are both poetic and prose in form.

Dates

1879-1953

Creator

Douglass, Earl, 1862-1931 (Person)

Language of Materials

Collection materials are in English.

Conditions Governing Access

Twenty-four hour advanced notice encouraged. Materials must be used on-site. Access to parts of this collection may be restricted under provisions of state or federal law.

Conditions Governing Use

The library does not claim to control copyright for all materials in the collection. An individual depicted in a reproduction has privacy rights as outlined in Title 45 CFR, part 46 (Protection of Human Subjects). For further information, please review the J. Willard Marriott Library’s Use Agreement and Reproduction Request forms.

Biographical Sketch

Earl Douglass, paleontologist, was born in Medford, Minnesota, 23 October 1862, the son of Fernando and Abigail Louisa Carpenter Douglass. He received his early education in the Medford schools and Pillsbury Academy in Owatonna, Minnesota. Subsequently he went to South Dakota, then Dakota, where he worked on a farm, taught school, and studied at the University of Dakota and the state agricultural college until 1890. During this period he made his first plant collection for an herbarium at the South Dakota Agricultural College.

In 1890 Earl Douglass went to Mexico on a botanical trip and after his return became assistant to Professor William Trelease at the Missouri Botanical Gardens in Saint Louis. There he studied systematic botany and plant histology at the Shaw School of Botany at Washington University. In 1892 he returned to the South Dakota Agricultural College. Suspended from the college in 1893 for publishing an article exposing corruption in the school, Douglass went to Iowa State College where he received his B.S. the same year.

During 1894-1900, Douglass conducted geological explorations in western Montana and taught school to pay expenses. There he gathered extensive collections of fossils. Of particular importance was his discovery of various tertiary beds containing extinct mammals and other vertebrates unknown to science. Earl Douglass received his M.S. degree at the University of Montana in 1899 and taught geology and physical geography there from 1899-1900.

From 1900-1902, Douglass held a fellowship in biology at Princeton University and studied geology, paleontology, osteology, and mammalian anatomy. In 1901 he accompanied a Princeton scientific expedition to the region of the Muscleshell River in Montana. During this expedition he discovered lower "eocene mammals in Ft. Union formation, thus settling a long continued dispute as to the age of these beds."

In 1902 Douglass became associated with the Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh, and the museum purchased his extensive collection of fossil remains he collected from Montana and South Dakota. He continued his work in Montana for the museum during part of 1902, and then returned to Pittsburgh. His studies of his collection of fossil remains from Montana appeared in the publications the Annals and Memoirs of Carnegie Museum between 1903 and 1910.

In 1905 Douglass was sent to collect vertebrate and invertebrate fossils in Minnesota, North Dakota, Montana, and Idaho and to obtain, if possible, data to solve certain geological problems in that region. On October 20 of that same year Earl Douglass married Pearl Charlotte Goetschius in Sheridan, Montana.

From 1907 to 1924 Douglass devoted himself to the exploration of the fossiliferous strata of the Uinta Basin in northeastern Utah. In 1909 he discovered the world famous dinosaur quarry near Jensen, Utah. The quarry now forms the nucleus for the present Dinosaur National Monument. From the quarry Earl Douglass collected a large number of fossils, mostly vertebrates, many of which were new to science. The fossils included dinosaurs of many families, genera, and species.

Earl Douglass resigned his position with Carnegie Museum in 1924, and was employed by the University of Utah to excavate dinosaur bones for their museum. After the bones were transferred to Salt Lake City, Douglass worked two years completing the difficult preliminary work in preparing the bones for mounting. At this point, Earl Douglass's employment with the university was terminated, and the memory of his contributions to the institution virtually obliterated. From this time until his death, Douglass was a consulting geologist for companies engaged in developing oil fields in Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and Texas. During this period he did notable research on oil, oil shale, asphalts, and other mineral deposits, and left much unpublished material on these subjects.

Douglass's interest in botany, his first love, never subsided, and during the last years of his life he devoted more time to paleo-botany than to any other phase of paleontology. He left a valuable collection of fossil plants, leaves, and flowers.

Earl Douglass's published writings included The Neocene Lake Beds of Western Montana (thesis for M.S. degree, published in 1900), The Gilsonite Holdings of the Gilson Asphaltum Company in Utah and Colorado (an extensive report for the Gilson Asphaltum Company, 1928-29), and a number of scientific papers published primarily in the Annals of the Carnegie Museum, Science, American Journal of Science, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, and Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History. Unfortunately, many of Douglass's discoveries were written up by other men and his contributions ignored because he was too busy to get to them.

William J. Holland of the Carnegie Museum, said of Douglass that "he added seventeen genera and eighty-three species to the ever growing list of fossil vertebrates. A great deal of his work related to the Merycoidodonts. He had mastered the entire literature relating to this interesting group. His collection, which was acquired by the Carnegie Museum, was rich in the remains of these animals. Important additions were made to it during his connection with the Museum, not only by himself, but by other members of the staff, and the Museum in consequence possesses one of the best assemblages in existence of material representing this long extinct group. Other additions which he made to our knowledge of the extinct mammals of North America were important. His careful observations upon the geology of the region where he collected are most valuable." There was not a good paleontological museum in the world that was not richer for Douglass's work.

On 31 January 1931, Earl Douglass died in Salt Lake City, Utah, age sixty-nine.