Montana's Pioneer Naturalist

A naturalist on Montanas academic frontier, passionate conservationist Morton J. Elrod was instrumental in establishing the Department of Biology at the University of Montana, as well as Glacier National Park and the National Bison Range. In Montanas Pioneer Naturalist, the first in-depth assessment of Elrods career, George M. Dennison reveals how one man helped to shape the scholarly study of nature and its institutionalization in the West at the turn of the century. Elrod moved to Missoula in 1897, just four years after the state universitys founding, and participated in virtually every aspect of university life for almost forty years. To reveal the depths of this pioneer scientists influence on the growth of his university, his state, and the academic fields he worked in, author George M. Dennison delves into state and university archives, including Elrods personal papers. Although Elrod was an active participant in bison conservation and the growth of the National Park Naturalist Service, much of his work focused on Flathead Lake, where he surveyed local life forms and initiated the universitys biological stationone of the first of its kind in the United States. Yet at heart Elrod was an educator who desired to foster in his students a love of nature, which, he said, should give health to any one, and supply knowledge of greatest value, either to the individual or to society, or to both. In this biography of a prominent scientist now almost forgotten, Dennisonlongtime president of the University of Montanademonstrates how Elrods scholarship and philosophy regarding science and nature made him one of Montanas most distinguished naturalists, conservationists, and educators.