A Debt to the Future: Achievement of the Desert Laboratory, Tumamoc Hill, Tucson, Arizona

Abstract

In 1903 the Carnegie Institution of Washington established a Desert Laboratory on Tumamoc Hill, Tucson, Arizona. For the next thirty-seven years the Desert Laboratory was the site of pioneering research into the biology and ecology of desert Plants and animals. More than sixty scientists who worked on Tumamoc Hill published some 350 papers and books based on research there. William A. Cannon and Volney M. Spalding share credit for successfully launching the new facility. Daniel T. MacDougal, who became the first director in 1906, hired an enthusiastic, able staff and recruited many visiting scientists. His untiring promotional efforts gave the laboratory a national reputation, and when he transferred his research projects to a second laboratory at Carmel, California, the Desert Laboratory entered a nine year decline. Promotion of Forrest Shreve to head the laboratory in 1928 brought about a renewed focus on the ecology of desert plants. The Carnegie Institution closed the facility in 1940, ostensibly because of the depression and consequent financial cutbacks, but actually because institution administrators no longer found it worthwhile to support descriptive ecological research.