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 pion~ering research into the biology and ecology of desert Plants and ammals. 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 recrmted many visiting scientists. His untiring promotional efforts ga~e the laboratory a national reputation, and when he transferred hts 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. Introduction “It won’t be many moons now before we shall have a laboratory here that will do your eyes good to see,” wrote William A. Cannon to Daniel T. MacDougal on October 17, 1903.1 Cannon was a plant anatomist, and MacDougal, a plant physiologist, was his employer. The laboratory in question was the Desert Laboratory on Tumamoc Hill two miles west of downtown Tucson, Arizona. Its stone walls had been completed a month earlier, and, even as Cannon wrote, painters and carpenters were putting the finishing touche~ on_ t~e interior. The following month Cannon told MacDougal, Thts ts absolutely the finest place to work. .. that could possibly be fo~nd; I am more and more pleased with the prospects for research as time goes on.”2 Over the next thirty-seven years, more than sixty scientists found the lab a fine place to work, and they published some 350 papers and books based on research there. 3 Their fields of study included geomorphology, climatology, geography, botany, entomology, and mammalogy. Though the laboratory has most often been singled out as a locus of early ecological work (McGinnies 1981, Mcintosh 1983), Desert Laboratory biologists were also physiologists, anatomists, morphologists, and geneticists. Some became top researchers in their fields, scientific superstars such as geographer Ellsworth Huntington, ecologists Forrest Shreve and Frederic Clements, and plant physiologists Daniel T. MacDougal and Burton E. Livingston. Today, a reader leafing through the old Carnegie Yearbooks (annual reports issued by the Carnegie Institution) might be impressed by the variety of problems touched on by D~sert Laboratory scientists and even more by the number that have smce become important topics of research. In 1904, Spalding noted the ability of Larrea tridentata to extract water from dry soils; later investigators confirmed and expanded his results (Oechel et al. 1972). MacDougal (1915) discovered that uprooted Barrel Cactus (Ferocactus wislizeni) could survive without water for long periods. Decades later, Nobel (1977) quantified this obser:ation in terms of transpiration, water potential, and seasonal ramfall. Cannon (Carnegie Yearbook Vol. 8 1909), having excavated roots of certain desert perennials, suggested that species rooted at the same depth compete with each other and that species rooted at different depths do not. Yeaton et al. (1977) confirmed this hypothesis nearly seven decades later. These examples could be multiplied many times. For its first four decades, the Desert Laboratory was a unique institution whose value to desert studies and to the careers of many individual scientists can hardly be calculated. The earliest researchers, well aware of the laboratory’s historic and scientific importance, wrote enthusiastically of its unique setting and research problems (Coville and MacDougal 1903, MacDougal 1903a, 1903b, 1908, Lloyd 1904, 1905 Cannon 1906, Huntington 1911a, 1911 b, Harris 1916). Recent accounts of the Desert Laboratory have discussed other aspects of its development. Wilder ( 1967) emphasized the early years of the laboratory and the personalities gathered there. McGinnies (1981) concentrated on the broad picture of the desert created by laboratory scienti~ts and prese~ted a bibliography of their research. Nobel (1988) bnefly summanzed the cactus studies undertaken at the laboratory. Mcintosh (1983) stressed the Desert Laboratory’s role in the emergence of ecology as a field of study. Broyles (1987) described the historic laboratory expedition to the Pinacate region in northwestern Sonora. Bowers (1988) depicted one of the laboratory’s major workers_ in her biography of Forrest Shreve. The present account emphastzes the laboratory’s political history and scientific achievements. Roots of the Desert Laboratory1881-1902 The idea for a laboratory devoted to desert plants was Frederick V. Coville’s. As chiefbotanist of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, he explored Death Valley in 1891 and came away impressed by the clear need for intensive research on deserts, largely an unknown environment. He presented his case to the Carnegie Institution of Washington’s botanical advisory committee. They agreed that ” there should be established at some point in the desert region of the southwestern United States a laboratory for the study of the life history of plants under desert conditions, with special reference to the absorption, storage and transpiration of water” (Carnegie Yearbook Vol. 1 1902: p. 5). Committee members believed that eventually the Desert Laboratory would justify its existence: once “the processes of plant growth in our deserts have been thoroughly investigated and are well understood, the b~tanist~ of the agricultural experiment stations in the arid states wtll be m a position to make a practical application of the knowledge to the special agricultural crops of the region” (Carnegie Yearbook Vol. 1 1902: p. 5). Despite such lip service to practical benefits, however, the Desert Laboratory was from its inception oriented toward pure, not applied, research. 26 Desert Plants In December, 1902, the Carnegie Institution appropriated $8,000 The Earliest Years 1903-1905 for the Desert Botanical Laboratory, as it was at first called. Four Construction of the laboratory proceeded rapidly after four local thousand dollars were budgeted for construction of a laboratory builders submitted bids in March, 1903. Coville supervised the building, $2,000 for equipment, $1,000 for books, and $3,000 for process as minutely as possible from Washington, D.C. To keep maintenance and the salary of a resident investigator (Macintosh the total cost under $4,000 he suggested that the builder eliminate 1983). After a five-year probationary period, the institution would the wainscoting from the interior. He requested varnished floors, evaluate the lab and decide whether to continue funding it. preferably waxed, and cautioned against the four-inch floorboards From January 24 to February 28, 1903, Coville and MacDougal, then director of laboratories at the New York Botanical Garden, toured the southwestern United States and Mexico in search of a location for the proposed lab. They realized that the most important criterion was that the new research station be situated not in a city but in undeveloped desert. As MacDougal wrote biologists “should be put into contact with their material in its best environment, instead of herding the workers and bringing the material to them.”5 After travelling as far south as Guaymas, Sonora, and as far west as Los Angeles, they settled on Tucson as the most suitable site. Here they found a “distinctly desert climate and flora” in combination with habitability” and “ready accessibility” (Coville and MacDougal 1903: p. 12). (Presciently, they avoided Phoenix because it was likely to undergo extensive irrigation and concomitant changes in natural vegetation.) Tucson also afforded rail service, telephone and telegraph communications, good stores, and the University of Arizona and its agricultural experiment station. The most important inducements were probably those offered by the Chamber of Commerce: forty acres of free land, a water system, utility connections, and a road to the laboratory site, concessions estimate to be worth $8,000. 6 MacDougal and Hornaday 1907 (USGS) called for in the specifications: such wide boards would collect dirt in the cracks, he feared. He worried also that the roofing and ceiling timbers would prove too light for such a large building, especially if every winter were to bring four inches of snow, as it : had in February, 1903. R. H. Forbes, director of the agricultural experiment station at the University of Arizona, kept an eye on the builders and informed MacDougal and Coville of progress and setbacks. (The architect for the project, Stuart F. Forbes, was his brother). By September 1, Cannon, as the first resident investigator, was on the spot and could supervise the final phases of construction. On the l5h he reported to MacDougal, “The inside woodwork, floors, window casings etc. remain to be done. Also the building must be wired.”7 A Mr. Kurtz constructed a road to the top of the hill; after riding over it in a horse drawn surrey. Cannon decided that the road was better suited to heavy teams than light vehicles. (For the next decade, road improvements were to be a predictable budget item.) In looking at Cannon’s photographs, MacDougal was pleased to see that much native vegetation had been left near the lab.
